Bet a Nickel in your Dreams?
by Ad Terrorem
Summary: What does an unstable bodyguard, a disillusioned assassin, a traumatised juggernaut, and a stateless knight all have in common? They have been tasked with ending this hideous war that has been raging for as long as human existence, in a definitive and elegant manner - a decision that could result in the greatest victory in history, or the end of it. Bloodborne/Cthulhu Mythos AU
1. Autumn Night (Noctis intro)

**(Author's Notes: Let me get this out of the way beforehand. I use a ton of OCs, as in so many that I've lost count, but absolutely none of them are intended to be SI characters. If my character delivery has failed, I admit that it could be my fault but please note that I try to make each character work on their own merits. Now, on with the show!)**

The music of the club pulsed, its heartbeat keeping the revelry within it alive. The dance floor was a tangle of limbs and lust, with people writhing to the maddening beat of the music. Hands groped at unmentionable areas, and bodies ground against each other, the music, the lights and the atmosphere driving all inhibitions from the minds of most of the club's patrons.

The DJ, who for some strange reason was wearing a giant bear mask, more befitting of a mascot, was pumping out tune after tune to keep the party 'alive', so to speak. He knew for a fact that said DJ could easily kill the party as well, especially since under that control station's desk was a submachine gun just waiting to be used.

But for a select few, they were trying to actually get shit done. And, nursing a cup of diluted yet pitch black and immensely bitter bilgewater that Junior had had the gall to pass off as strong coffee, the music and strobe lights only made Noctis Argent even more pissed off than usual. This was the fifth such place he had dragged himself into twice as many hours, and he was gradually losing his temper bit by bit.

His sister was coming to Beacon and he was doing the usual to ensure his safety just in case her teammates dragged her into establishments such as this. His objectives here were to instruct Junior to not sell her alcohol in the event that she became inebriated and to instruct his men to keep their hands off her, and they seemed simple enough for the man to enforce that he would accept his proposition.

Any deviations from his instructions would be replied with swift and overwhelming retribution, preferably the explosive kind. Plain and simple murder would also suffice, but _that_ was just unadventurous.

He drained his cup of black water, grimacing as he did. The bitterness of the fluid clung to the back of his tongue and throat. When he got back to the hotel suite that his family now resided in, he was going to drain the entire one litre bottle of complementary mineral water that stood on his nightstand just to clear of his bowels of the bad coffee.

There was a _reason_ he preferred tea; at least tea didn't become something resembling Grimm blood when shoddily made.

His drink gone, he pulled the gas mask that had been hanging off his neck to cover his entire head, but leaving the helmet and faceplate on the floor. His ruffled greyish hair was now pressed flat against his scalp by the mask, but luckily none of it reached his eyes. He needed to have it cut soon, Noctis noted.

However, his attempts to talk with Hei 'Junior' Xiong, the owner of this forsaken place and the best information broker of the Valean criminal underworld, had been interrupted by Roman Torchwick of all people. Sure, the infamous crime boss definitely warranted more attention than a mere bodyguard, but Roman has been allowed to bring his weapon in while he had to leave Sable Lament in a locker simply because it had no inert mode. At least he had been allowed to bring his parrying dagger in.

He was too far away to hear what they had been saying, but it certainly seemed serious enough.

Besides, he was too busy surreptitiously scanning the club with his scroll, downloading what was essentially a three dimensional blueprint of the place. Having friends in high places certainly helped.

Just in case he had to storm the place, guns blazing, in the future. Just in case he just so had to place a bomb in the premises.

A seat at the bar had ensured that he could get Junior's attention immediately after Roman left, and he was getting impatient. Not impatient enough to interrupt the two men, but some of the way there. The bulky greatcoat he wore was already getting uncomfortable to sit in, the coat having been designed for soldiers that were supposed to be standing for most of their time, and in winter climates, no less.

However, he had specifically chemically impregnated it to ward against biological and chemical attack, you know, just in case someone throws in a gas grenade or something like that. It was also thick enough to provide limited physical protection against melee attacks and provided padding in case of blunt impacts.

In other words, it was much better than that skimpy thing his sister wore for tournaments. However, he was now sitting on a bar stool in an air-conditioned club.

Not exactly ideal conditions to be wearing a greatcoat and a vest of the same armour that made up his faceplate and shoulder plates over it. The mask was hooked up to a backpack sized battery, which Noctis referred to as a power pack. It powered both the air filtration system that made his gas mask functional, which was honestly unnecessary in a nightclub, and his now detached weapon.

Noctis certainly felt lucky to have his gas mask, however. The bimbo hooker hanging around in the club that was currently somewhere behind him trying to seduce a man whose baser urges were stronger than basic human intelligence, had perfume strong enough to easily count as poisonous gas.

While he brooded in a corner, Roman and Junior had apparently wrapped up their conversation. Excellent.

Roman now stood and prepared to leave, saying, "See you around, Junior, and I trust that you won't just dump some dumb muscle on my hands."

Then, the other man left. Noctis raised his hand and said, "Junior? Now that you're done talking to Torchwick, can I ask you something?"

Junior didn't really seem surprised that Noctis knew the other man's name. Not that he should, with Roman's name and face plastered on the news almost every week.

There was a moment in which Junior paused. The blood seemed to run out of his face, leaving an unhealthy-looking white colour, while his lips moved of their own accord to pronounce, " _Matador_."

 _Ah, this one knows what they face, at least. The monster that wiped the Crown off of the face of Mistral._

But then another person, this time an almost scantily clad blonde walked in, and Junior replied, "Hold on a sec, I need to deal with her first."

Noctis stared in disbelief. He had been waiting for the past half an hour, and he hadn't exactly been enjoying himself. Now, the first and probably last chance he gets to talk to Junior, owner of the largest and most popular nightclub in Vale, and it slips out of his fingers entirely?

God damn it all.

He slammed down the mug in his left hand, ignoring the spiderweb of cracks that almost instantly creeped over the entire porcelain structure.

His right arm reached up, and his forehead came to rest on his palm. A clear expression of exasperation if there ever was one.

The blonde went ahead and ordered a drink, much to Noctis's consternation. Looks like this was going to take a while. He decided to play a game on his scroll while waiting, and soon his finger was dancing on his screen to help the little spaceship dodge a veritable storm of virtual bullets.

Staring at the blonde and Junior while they talked, Noctis had a few questions on his mind. Was this girl some sort of call girl, or was her frankly indecorous attire intentional?

Now they were sniping at each other. He wished that more people knew the skill of getting to the point of a conversation. That would be very useful here.

But then Junior asked for the blonde's name, and everything just went to hell.

Noctis realised, with a start, that the grin on the blonde's face had become positively predatory.

And her hand literally blurred into motion as she grabbed Junior's groin in a vice-like grip.

The man's agony was both visible and audible. Crying out in surprise and pain, his eyes bugged out and he bent over in a futile effort to protect his crotch.

Noctis clenched his left arm into a fist. The augmentic limb almost silently clicked and whirred, while panels opened to expose heat sinks. Servos locked in place and springs compressed while a piston, slightly more than half of the length of his forearm, connected his wrist to a point barely before his mechanical elbow - his prosthetic arm's combat mode has been engaged.

Hopefully he wouldn't need to crush any skulls today; bone fragments were a _bitch_ to pick out. He might not have Sable Lament with him now, but he would still put up a good fight regardless.

 _A good fight? You'll **crush** her, damn it! Pick her apart, right down to the marrow of her bones!_

Shut up. Please.

"People say you know everything," the blond, now discarding any semblance of civility, said while reaching into her pocket.

Junior's henchmen had started to gather around the scene, weapons drawn. Red swords and axes gleamed in the light of the nightclub. The Malachite twins had also begun to advance towards Yang, their grim expressions making their intentions clear.

Melanie's bladed heels engaged, while Miltia prepared her own claws. Noctis silently praised them; hiding weapons that well took _skill_.

The situation had become markedly more tense, Noctis noted, and a fight was exceedingly likely to break out at this point. Yay. Tactical genius for the win.

Instead of a weapon, which was what Noctis had feared, she took out her scroll and brought it up to Junior's face.

"Tell me where I can find her and I'll let you go," she said, still cheerful in tone at least. "Or else, I close my hand. No more Juniors for Junior."

Junior's voice strained as he whimpered "I've never seen her before, I swear!"

Noctis stared in disbelief. This girl was mental. First she walked into a nightclub looking like a damned hooker, and still expected to be taken seriously? Now she had assaulted the bartender, who by the way happened to be a mafia bookkeeper, and humiliated him in front of possibly hundreds of people.

He wouldn't be surprised if her house was set on fire for this, to be honest. At least, it would have... until every single criminal organisation on Remnant seemed to mellow down two years ago.

 _Maybe because of something you did, hm?_

Noctis sighed under his breath.

"You definitely know how compromising this looks, so I'd suggest you hurry the fuck up," the blonde chuckled, seemingly taking delight in the man's humiliation.

His voice still strained, Junior was apparently trying to bargain. The pained tone in his voice was unmistakably genuine.

"I don't know who the hell that is, so let me go now!"

The blonde let go, Junior breathing a sigh of relief.

"You'll pay for that!" The older man growled. He then puts his sunglasses back on and walks away, the blonde following closely behind.

Is she dumb, suicidal or both?" Noctis wondered aloud, the harsh notes of derision rising clearly into his muttered whisper.

Pissing off someone so well connected, so powerful as to be able to own the largest entertainment venue in Vale complete with henchmen, and she still had the guts to aggravate him further _after_ she had crushed his family jewels? That took some guts, and Noctis could respect that.

But guts tended to get people killed.

He was lucky that that white cloaked woman had come to save him before it was too late, but that goddamn Goliath had trod on his left arm, and literally smeared it on the floor. Overkill much?

He had had to get a prosthetic arm, improving it over the years, and as for the kind white cloaked woman, with the greatsword that seemed so... radiant, resplendent in its ethereal light... he never saw her again…

The light of salvation.

Mountain Glenn had been a clusterfuck for all involved, but it had hit him especially hard. He sighed, before dismissing the line of thought. Best not to open _that_ can of worms now.

Noctis winced. He looked down, looking for the source of the pain eating away at his right hand, and sure enough, his hand was crumbling away into ash. Again. Granted, it was minor, only disintegrating out from between his fingers, and the damage was already regenerating, but it was still there nonetheless.

His semblance, however powerful it was, wasn't subtle and wasn't easily controlled. His body distintergating into ash was definitely not as friendly as say, magnetism. Some people had all the luck with semblances.

He couldn't lose himself to the pain. Not to the rage, the pure _bloodlust_ that seemed to consume his mind at times. Not here, not now.

 _Not like in Argus_.

In the midst of his reminiscing, he barely heard the blonde try to... flirt? With Junior? Noctis snorted under his breath.

Didn't she know that Junior was married? What kind of a rock was she living under? She had a scroll, presumably with an internet connection, and still seemed unaware. Well, joke's on her.

And now she was asking to 'kiss and make up'? How shameless was she? Was she some kind of hooker? Well, she was probably one of almost a hundred he had seen at work today.

Junior, understandably, was both surprised and offended. However, his fear of the blonde before him override any sense of shame he might have felt, and he leaned in to comply with the violent blonde's demand.

And then the blonde punched him in the face, her bracers transforming into yellow combat gauntlets that covered her entire upper arm, causing Junior to rag doll across his own club. Luckily, he saw Junior's aura flare before the older man took an impromptu trip across his own club.

"What the fuck?" Noctis muttered under his breath, finding that he could currently only stare in disbelief. What kind of lunatic was this blonde? He had witnessed her commit assault, battery, sexual harassment and criminal intimidation in a span of less than ten minutes.

The Troupe Master _himself_ would have applauded at such a blatant display of disrespect of the law. At least, before incinerating everything in a five kilometre radius with naught but a snap of his fingers... the murderous bastard.

He got up from the bar stool, his greatcoat billowing at his feet. Damn it all, Noctis thought angrily, this crazy woman was going to kill Junior. How was he supposed to negotiate with a dead man?

Seeing Noctis get up, and thinking that he was about to attack her, she pointed her gauntlet at him. A shotgun barrel springs out of its top, pointing at his chest. Without missing a beat, she opened fire, letting loose a single Foster slug and sending Noctis flying into a wall with the sheer force of the solid projectile slamming into his armour. The problem was that he had not had enough time to raise his aura, thus forcing his armour to crumple inwards to stop the slug.

To put it simply, it hurt. Pain upon pain. His ribs burned with it. He had probably broken a few of them from the impact. Every breath brought it. The metallic taste in his mouth only made it worse. His armour had been so badly dented that it was crushing his torso.

For some reason, he had expected his blood to taste sweet, almost cloyingly so. The familiar taste of iron had surprised him somewhat, but in retrospect maybe it was his brain playing tricks on him.

Noctis vaguely remembered reading how, in the Great War, blunt weapons were used to dent the plate armour worn by Valean Royal Guards, crushing the man within with his own armour plating. Now a similar situation had befallen him.

As he tried to stand and extricate himself from the rubble of the ruined wall, the lead pile he gripped to steady himself snapped, sending him sprawling onto the jagged pieces of concrete. He tore off his dented and ruined chest plate, throwing it aside to the ground. Noctis had landed on his shattered rib cage, making the pain even worse.

He had activated his aura which was not working to repair any damage it could, but the pain was almost too much to bear.

He could barely stay conscious, what with the burning as his body dissolved into ash and reassembled itself simultaneously. The splitting headache as his mind slowly broke into two was also hard to deal with. Not to mention that his neglecting to wear his helmet had given him one hell of a concussion.

He slowly pulled himself up once again, falling down once again, this time onto his knees. The ash of his semblance was now falling away in a drifting mass from him, clinging onto his clothing before falling away to the floor, where it spread into smoky fumes, curling into rivulets that drifted slowly away from the greater mass.

There were laws in place to protect normal civilians from becoming collateral damage in fights between those gifted with aura and semblances. If a Huntsman or someone with the same abilities, ie. aura and a semblance, was found to hurt or kill an innocent person without aura, the punishments were dire indeed. If one were injured while engaged in criminal activities, say if a gang member had been injured by a Huntsman, the law was usually in favour of the Huntsman, but if an innocent civilian whom had just been at the wrong place and the wrong time had been injured or killed by a Huntsman?

The law was even more condemning on the Huntsman than usual.

The punishment for murdering a civilian, or in worse cases multiple, in cold blood if you were a Huntsman? In the past, it was the death penalty. In modern terms, a kill order. Execution by Huntsman, usually carried out by the leader of the local branch of the Huntsman's Guild or one of the more senior Huntsmen.

In short, that shot had killed the woman along with himself. Hardly a consolation, but still.

Noctis's hand went to his side, drawing his parrying dagger. It wasn't much, but it was his only melee option at this point. Well, other than the lead pipe in his hand... but that barely counted as a weapon in the first place.

He barely noticed the blonde striding towards him, extending a hand in his direction. She said something that he barely heard.

"... you ….?"

She was going to finish him off.

There was a dull pain in his throat and in his head, a scratching pain that made him feel as if his trachea was being torn apart from the inside. He let the pain consume him.

He _screamed_. It was a scream more like that of a beast's, framed by a maw lined by too many teeth.

 _"To borrow the strength of the terrible undead darkbeasts, if only for a moment, to blast surrounding foes back with the force of a roaring beast..._ _The indescribable sound is broadcast with the caster's own vocal cords, which begs the question, what terrible things lurk deep within the frames of men? Would you fall to the blood's allure, young Hunter, as so many others have done? There's always space for one more in the Hunter's Nightmare..."_

/-/

Yang could only stare in horror as the burst of shotgun shells slammed into the heavily garbed man, denting the breastplate of his armour as he flew into the wall, his impact causing the wall to practically collapse onto him. She had thought that he was another one of Junior's thugs, but in retrospect maybe he was just an innocent bystander who was trying to defuse a fight that he felt obligated to stop.

Oh God. Oh God indeed. She had just killed an innocent man.

Or she hadn't, as he saw the man stumble around the rubble, trying to right himself before falling back down into the rubble. She rushed towards him, exclaiming "Oh god, are you okay?"

Junior's thugs, as well as the Malachite sisters, had backed off. Melanie was helping Junior up from the ground, while Militia stared at her in shock.

Rightly so, because this was a serious matter.

This could warrant an _Excommunicate Tratoris_ \- Yang's worst nightmare, especially if she were to be permanently separated from her sister in the process.

The highest punishment possible, barring the aforementioned sentence, was a kill order. It was essentially the same as what it was even a few centuries ago; a death sentence being carried out by Huntsmen or the military. Such a sentence was only carried out for the worst of crimes; such as treason or mass murder.

Currently, that was not a concern. Thank god,

So she rushed over to assist the injured man, whom was kneeling on the ground, slumped forward in a clear sign of pain.

"Are you okay?" Yang asked. The smirk that had adorned her features until recently had been utterly wiped away, replaced by a look of concern.

She noticed neither the fine ash pouring off of the man's form as smoke, nor the lead pipe he gripped in his right hand, until it was too late.

She only found out when the man raised his head, meeting her lilac eyes with the most empty gaze she had ever seen. His black eyes, or at least what of them she saw through the lenses of his gas mask, seemed to be lightless pits, lifeless yet seeming to bore a hole into her skull with the intensity of his stare.

For the first time since entering the club, she felt afraid. Not for the man in front of her, but _of_ him.

And then, the man _screamed,_ sending out a wave of force that she somehow didn't understand with it. It seemed less of a scream and more of a bestial roar. By some instinct rooted deep inside her psyche, Yang's arms raised themselves up to shield her face as something slammed into her and everyone else in the club with the force of a gale, sending her hair rippling back from the onslaught that hit her.

When she finally lowered her arms, a few things happened all at once.

Three things happened.

Firstly, the figure before her stood up, strode towards her, seemingly fiddling with something in his hands as he did so. Then, his figure started to disintegrate into the same ash that was now pouring off of the man.

Secondly, Junior's henchmen, with Militia at the helm, started to advance towards her again. Since the other guy turned out to possess Aura after all, all bets were off and now it looked like the gloves were off as well. Melanie was still helping Junior steady himself, but Junior was already hefting a massive club onto his shoulder.

Thirdly, and most importantly, as the figure before her fell away fully into ash, the thing the figure was holding clattered to the floor. Yang, noticing that the situation from before was going to return with a vengeance, only allowed her a second to notice the fallen object.

She ended up staring at the previously unknown object for much longer than that.

Militia, seeing that Yang was staring at something, turned to look at the objects, and started staring as well. Melanie forced Junior back onto the ground again, before taking cover herself.

Because what she, and everyone else, saw, was a fragmentation grenade. Standard military-issue, common enough to be found in the usage of almost every armed force in the world. Minus the pin, of course.

Yang could only shout one precious word, before she, along with everyone else in the immediate vicinity, dove to the ground in the opposite direction.

"Fuck!"

The grenade went off, knocking everyone off their feet indiscriminately.

/-/

Sometimes, Noctis hated his semblance. It looked edgy as all hell, it tended to make people incontinent with sufficient exposure when combined with grenades, and the option of teleporting for short distances while leaving behind short-lived clones that he had to literally split his brain to use just seemed not as effective in combat as say, magnetism. His brain literally split into two to control his two forms, with his left brain controlling his actual body and his right brain controlling his clone.

He was pretty sure that his empathy died a little every time he split himself, but he would deal with the repercussions later.

Other times? He absolutely loved it. Being a teleporting, nigh impervious reusable suicide bomber was just fun. Well, for him at least.

"Few hunters can resist the intoxication of the hunt! Look at you, just the same as all the rest!" He yelled, before bursting out into manic laughter.

He teleported behind the blonde, the stray ash coalescing into his form. He then swung the lead pipe at her, catching her on the head with a savage blow. Her aura absorbed the hit, of course, but it still disoriented her enough for him to prime another grenade and teleport away, leaving her to experience the detonation of the fragmentation grenade up close and personal.

She spun around, driving her fist into the face of the facsimile but only managing to smash its facsimile of its skull, displacing the ash that made up its head with a loud crack before the grenade exploded, sending her flying back from the shockwave and leaving her with a face full of shrapnel.

He teleported behind her again, this time doing a leg sweep that knocked the blonde off her feet. He caught the blonde on her way down with the point of his parrying dagger, driving it into her aura. The flames that had sprung up on her hair and the rapidly growing heat coming from her threatened to rip apart his form into ash floating in the breeze, but his aura soaked up the damage.

He kicked her between the legs, and when she crouched down to defend her private parts she was met with a knee to the face. Of course he got backhanded in the unhelmeted head for his trouble, taking a chunk out of his already strained aura and making his concussion worse.

The pain was gone now, nothing more than an unpleasant experience to be pushed aside and forgotten. What was left was the euphoria that his semblance gave him. He felt free. Free from the pain that constantly plagued him, his grief and guilt over having survived while so many others had died. Free from the fear that he would fail his new family, or lose them to death's cold, uncaring grasp.

In a fight he felt truly free, if only for a moment.

"The beasts cannot be stopped! What good are hunters now?" He shouted, continuing to laugh. The words seemed to be spilling of his mouth, rather like a repressed memory to be honest. It didn't matter, anyway,

The procedure was simple, if only for a while. Whack her with the pipe to disorient her, then teleport away while leaving the resulting facsimile and the accompanying grenade to deal the real damage. Either that or find an opening for his parrying dagger to snake in past her defences and cut into her aura. Taking a few glancing hits chipped away at his aura, but it ultimately did not matter.

However, she soon caught on to the pattern, dodging the pipe and punching Noctis in the solar plexus with a right hook before he had the chance to teleport away.

"Fuck," Noctis muttered, feeling the warm rush of blood filling his mouth. The gas mask over his face stopped him from spitting it out, forcing him to swallow the oddly sweet substance. It was cloyingly sweet, and cling to his tongue rather like some kind of disgusting medicine.

 _The beast blood, what else? Why, you practically **bathed** in it as a Hunter!_

 _That_ was most probably _not_ a glancing hit.

She then swung her left fist in a wild haymaker towards his face, which he deflected with his metal left hand that he had brought up to block the attack. He then grabbed the blonde's head with his right hand, before slashing at the aura protecting the blonde's throat with the dagger in his left.

He then teleported away again, farther from the blonde than the last few times. He needed to plan another tactic, and fast.

His injured ribs were draining his aura for their own recovery, and right now his willpower was almost gone.

Almost.

He tried to teleport again, but as his body started to disintegrate into ash, two glowing orange projectiles that seemed to home in on him slammed into his chest, stripping off his aura and exascerbating the already grevious injury to his ribs. He only had enough strength to not fall onto his chest and impale his vital organs on his shattered ribs before he dropped to the floor in a heap on his back.

He raised his right hand, the lead pipe having clattered out of his reach, and gave the blonde bitch the finger.

"Fuck you..."

He took a breath, forced it out through gritted teeth. The blonde glanced at him before leaving.

"You got lucky..."

Having said his piece, he then proceeded to black out entirely.

/-/

Yang was, to put it simply, terrified.

One moment, the man was in front of her, a grenade about to explode in his hands and his figure already dissipating into shadow. The grenade would detonate, and Yang would be flung back by the force of the explosion. Next moment, he was behind her, swinging a lead pipe at her head to disorientate her enough to repeat the cycle. Being beaten, slashed and kicked in a _very_ sensitive area probably wasn't helping as well.

And every time it completed itself, her aura became that much closer to being depleted. If it depleted...she didn't even want to think about it. A grenade going off point blank in her face wouldn't really leave much to bury, would it? And then she wouldn't be able to be there for Ruby. That terrified her even more, and drove her to find a way to break away from the rapidly worsening shitstorm that she had started.

The things he was saying, they somehow struck at something deep inside her. It was weird, but honestly terrifying. Those statements seemed to apply personally, down to her very soul. That scared her, more than she'd be normally willing to admit.

Luckily - or unluckily - everyone else that wanted her blood had backed off, obviously afraid of getting caught in the crossfire of the seemingly immortal duplicating suicide bomber teleporting all over the place. So it seemed that nobody wanted to intervene, whether to save her or to spite her? So be it.

With that lack of assistance... it was only God whom she could thank for still having around fifteen percent of her aura when she finally hit the terrifying assailant, breaking the deadly cycle, and the man teleported away again.

This time, she saw him from afar, and realised something.

"Holy crap, I actually have a chance at surviving this..." she muttered.

She primed the shotguns of her gauntlets, and pointed them towards the crazy teleporting man. Fire Dust rounds, with their minor homing capabilities, would be perfect for this.

She fired, the projectiles racing towards him in a graceful arc, exploding when they slammed into his aura and launching him further away from her. He was also knocked to the ground by the blast. Even better.

"This is my chance..." she muttered to herself.

The Malachite twins, the henchmen, and Junior himself were staying well back from the bar area of the club, which had been reduced to a state remarkably similar to a smoking battlefield - a few grenades tended to do that.

With that in mind, she dashed out of the front door, no one bothering to stop her.

She neither Junior sigh in relief nor heard what he said to himself.

"Lucky bitch. Looks like he got rusty, then."

She would come to regret that, in time. But enough for now.

It honestly surprised her that Ruby was right outside, but she honestly had no time to respond.

"Yang? Is that you? What are you doing here?" Ruby asked, her surprise evident both on her face and in her voice.

"No time to explain, sis! We need to go!"

Ruby looked even more surprised, both from Yang's curtness and the very obvious quaver in her voice.

"What happened?" Ruby asked as she jumped onto Bumblebee, riding pillion as they gathered speed.

"It's a long story, Rubes. And I'll need to change my pants before I tell you."

They then sped off into the frosty Vale night.

What she didn't stay to notice was that the man she had fought didn't get up.

Neither did she see Junior personally bring the man to the Vale General Hospital, admit him into a hospital ward, and contact his family.

/-/

Noctis woke up in a hospital bed, with Junior of all people sitting beside his sister at his bedside.

"Oh, you're finally awake!" His sister remarked. "I was thinking that your shattered ribs would have finally put you down for good."

"You know what'll finally put me down? You settling down for once." He snarked. Pyrrha rolled her eyes.

Junior then finally opened his mouth, saying, "You never told me your sister was Pyrrha Nikos of all people."

"I got interrupted." Noctis drawled.

"That's a major understatement, and you know it," the older man deadpanned. "I hope you'll be alright. That blonde bitch put you down, but you still put up one hell of a fight. You very nearly got the better of her, but I'd say she got lucky. Very lucky, with that semblance of yours. If both of you had been trying to kill each other, I'll have had to put my money on you..."

"Those days are over," Noctis said harshly. "You know that."

 _Matador? Retirement doesn't suit you, I'm afraid..._

With modernisation, came civility. Now that people tended to take offence at summary execution, the second highest punishment before a kill order for a rogue Huntsman was being declared _Excommunicate Tratoris_.

Huntsmen declared as such essentially became persona non grata, forbidden from working for governments or with office Huntsman academies. Since Huntsmen usually hadn't pursued any sort of formal education barring attending Huntsman academies, those declared as _Excommunicate Tratoris_ essentially because jobless vagrants.

Some found work in the criminal underworld, like Roman Torchwick as one notable example, while yet others became mercenaries. However, all of them were basically social outcasts.

If his former life under a _non de guerre_ caught up with him, that was the fate that laid in store.

Where did you learn to fight like that?"

"Bodyguard classes," Noctis replied. "That and sessions with the same instructors my sister had. I never joined a tournament because my semblance would be overpowered enough for the judges to disqualify me on the spot." It was a lie, and both he and his sister knew it. She looked disapprovingly at him. What? Did she honestly expect him to confess his secret to a total stranger?

"What were you going to tell me before hurricane blondie came in and fucked everything up?" Junior asked.

"If my sister goes into your club with her teammates or friends..." Noctis mused. "If she looks like she's had enough alcohol, could you stop giving her alcohol before she gets too drunk for her own good?"

"You wanted to ask me that?" Junior looked at him curiously. "Sure, I'll follow through with that, it's club policy that Beacon students musn't become drunk in our premises anyway because they tend to smash up shit when drunk. However, it seems some just skip the getting drunk part." He sighed, before continuing. "Tell you what, I'll look out for her anyway, and I'll tell my men and anyone else I can get to listen to me to keep their hands off her."

"Ahem," Pyrrha cleared her throat. "I'm still here, guys. And of course I won't get drunk, don't be silly."

"But... but if your friends or teammates challenge you to a drinking competition or something…?" He stammered.

"I'm competitive, but not _that_ competitive," she said, rolling her eyes. "Oh, I forgot to tell you that Headmaster Ozpin called your scroll earlier, but you were sleeping."

"Who? Ozpin, of all people?" Noctis surprisedly exclaimed. "What the fuck?"

"Language, dumbass," Pyrrha swatted his arm. "Headmaster Ozpin to both of us. He called to notify us that you've been accepted to Beacon with me."

"What?" Noctis practically shouted, still careful to mind his language.

"Yeah, something about, if you were a Beacon student, that fight you got into could be passed off as a scuffle between two students. On the other hand, if you weren't, the other Huntress-in-training will be in some really hot water legally. He then asked if you'd like to be enrolled as a student. I accepted on your behalf, of course."

Noctis just stared in shock. Happy shock, but still.

"Well, I'd have had to get new armour soon anyways. Always wanted to test out that new Kevlar-ceramic composite armour, but I never found an excuse to break it out until now," he said, accompanied by a shrug. "By the way, where's my weapon?"

"I have it with me," Junior announced, and produced a heavy looking rifle, its barrel shrouded with what Noctis knew was a coolant tank. "I got Melanie to open your locker with the master key, and it's been with me ever since. It's a weird looking weapon if I've ever seen one. Could you show me how it works?"

"Sorry, I can't. It isn't charged anyway, so I can't show you the coolest part. All I can tell you is that the rifle can transform into a rapier."

"What's the coolest part then?" Junior asked.

"It shoots lasers," both Noctis and Pyrrha replied, the former in excitement and the latter in exasperation.

"Damn. Must be near impossible to dodge. Remind me to never get on your bad side, alright? Anyway..." He paused. "You kind of blew up a lot of my club. I'm not gonna chase you for compensation or anything, since I know that shit kinda hit the fan there, but you still broke a lot of bottles and spilled a lot of booze."

Noctis chucked. "We both know that you keep the good stuff in the back. You run a bar for _Huntsmen_ , Junior. Those bottles out in the front were probably filled with coloured water."

"You're actually spot on." Junior admitted. "Now, your sister actually told me that my club was actually the last stop before you were done, so I feel like I should apologise for the shitstorm I accidentally pulled you into."

"It's alright." Noctis shrugged. "It's about par for the course anyway. My luck with stuff like this is generally horrible."

"I kinda to go now, sorry. The club isn't going to manage itself, and I need to make sure that the repair crew aren't gonna pilfer the place."

"See you around, Junior!" Noctis chuckled, waving as he did. "Don't worry one damn bit about what the blonde one said, your name fits you perfectly!"

"See you around, kiddo," the larger older man said, smiling as he did, as he walked out of the ward door.

If one could have followed Junior, they would have seen his smile and cheerful demeanour fall off of his face like a mask - replaced by the expression of one whom had glimpsed the personification of death itself and lived to tell the tale.

Only a few were privy to the tale of the Matador and his one-man purge of the Crown, after all. Usually those who had their ear to the ground, and whom fled before the largest and most enigmatic criminal enterprise in Remnant came crashing down around their ears.

An impossible task, but yet one in which he had proved himself very admirably indeed. It could be said that the bodies he burned that day... laid the foundations for what there is today.

But that was enough for now.

"Now, what to do with the Beacon situation…?" Noctis asked quietly to himself. Now he could scout out the place itself as well… perhaps put down defences once he found out where his sister's dorm room was.

"No. Don't even think about it," Pyrrha said adamantly, evidently putting her foot down. She looked even more exasperated, if it was possible to be in such a state. "Firstly, you need to recover. Secondly, that's just plain creepy."

"Aww…" Noctis whined.

Still, there were worse things than not getting to place a surveillance system. He decided to let the matter rest. After all, what could go wrong?

 _The first move of the great game? A pawn, moved forward two spaces. Queen's Gambit._

 _And what a game it was._

 **(Author's notes: Well, hello! This is my first fanfic, and a crossover at that, so at the moment I've only got a basic outline - based on a few years' worth of daydreaming up a storyline in class - as to where this story will go. You might notice that this has been labelled as a Bloodborne crossover, but it's what I call a gradual AU. You'll eventually notice it, trust me. Updates will be sporadic at best, but I pledge to do my utmost best to finish this thing.)**

 **(If you're looking for Bloodborne/Lovecraft content, that's found in Ch.4 and from Ch.6 onwards. The first five chapters are character intros and an informational codex.)**


	2. Labyrinth (Icarus intro)

Icarus Azure, codenamed Daedalus, checked the updated flight plans on his wrist-mounted scroll. The timing was perfect; Jacques Schnee's personal Bullhead was scheduled to be inbound in about fifteen minutes. Just as they had planned...

Sienna Khan had been explicit with the motive for the assassination; the death of the current CEO of the Schnee Dust Company would send a clear message to the upper echelons of society that Faunus rights would be protected at all costs by the White Fang. The utterly demeaning practices that SDC Dust mines used to manage their Faunus employees, such as significant pay gaps, lesser job security, and lower safety standards for their designated workplaces, would not stand.

Well, Sienna thought so, at least. And she wasn't exactly the most sane woman around, not at all. Saner women could arguably be found in your average madhouse.

What was more likely, Icarus felt, was that the SDC's policy makers would use the assassination as an excuse to crack down even further upon its Faunus employees. Poking the bear with a spear, he mused, usually gave the unlucky hunter the privilege of being rendered into meat paste by an angry and wounded bear.

Still, Sienna's decision was final, and he wasn't anywhere close to disobeying direct orders. Especially with his petulant, loyal to a fault nineteen year old superior officer next to him.

Icarus sighed. Adam Taurus was annoying at best, but he was certainly skilled enough to join him in this mission. Besides, he was pretty sure that Adam would have ended up crying in his sleep if he hadn't been chosen as Icarus's spotter and point man. The man could be _such_ a child sometimes.

He grimaced, both from the cold of the Mistralian mountain range - despite the voluminous hooded green ghillie cloak he was wearing that was helping somewhat to keep him warm - and the shiver that ran down his spine at what he was supposed to do. He was only sixteen, but Adam had went ahead and recommended him for the assignment because he was the only one with the sufficient skills and the apparent devotion to even attempt it.

Lying prone on a mountainous cliff face, with temperatures being well below freezing, wasn't fun at all. If it was any consolation, Adam was also stuck on this god-forgotten mountain with him.

"Check the flight plans again, Adam. And tell me the wind direction, wind speed and distance to target while you're at it," he whispered.

Indeed, the flight plans were key to this little venture. Never mind the fact that he had only managed to see the plans a scant few hours ago, or that he had only been briefed yesterday, or that the mountain winds seemed to change speed and direction every five fucking minutes... according to White Fang command, this assignment was basically cut and dry!

Adam peered into the spotter's scope. Icarus noted, with some displeasure, that the other man had not bothered with anything resembling camouflage. His 'partner' was currently decked out in a white winter jacket, which also happened to contrast enough with the dark grey basalt and scraggly yellow-green shrubs around them to give the sniper a mild headache.

"Wind speed and direction is twenty metres per second, to the north-east. Estimated distance to target is ranging from seven hundred and eighty metres to eight hundred and ten metres."

With the way that the wind kept fluctuating, Icarus wouldn't be surprised if the wind was going towards the _south-west_ the next time his spotter looked into the scope.

"Damn it," Icarus muttered, cuddling the stock of his rifle in his left shoulder - he was left-handed. "A thirty metre margin of error is thirty metres too much."

"Well, the flight plans we got are a general flight path. They're precise, but not that precise. Besides, we only got them this morning."

He wasn't even supposed to be doing this. He was from the Valean cell. Adam was an overseer dispatched from Menagerie to assist in commanding the Valean cell. Sienna Khan herself had ordered this to be done from her headquarters in Menagerie, and here he was in the Mistral Alps. To hell with this, he thought. Why was he doing this?

Because the White Fang was essentially his only home. He'd joined as an idealistic teenager about two years ago, persuaded in part by a family which had, among other things, participated in the Faunus Rights Revolution as revolutionaries. With the encouragement of a father who had already made quite a name for himself as a lieutenant in the White Fang, as well as a brother who was joining alongside him, he had thrown in his lot with the organisation which represented hope itself among the Faunus community.

At least, that was before the _mission_. He didn't remember much of what exactly happened, but he did remember how badly it had gone.

A kill team, led by his father, had gone out to kill a Huntsman who had apprehended a particularly important White Fang operative. He and his brother had gone to provide sniper overwatch; he was the sniper and his brother was the spotter.

What they hadn't anticipated was that the Huntsman was a bloody monster. Icarus still remembered the empty gaze of that man through the visor of the pilot's helmet, and the giant fuck-off revolver that was placed on his forehead before the demon - because there was absolutely _no way_ that he was human - had left him for dead. He still remembered the cold rasp of the Huntsman's attached respirator, and how he subtly twitched under the influence of only God knew how much combat drugs coursing through his veins.

Icarus still remembered the gunshot, seconds after the monster had spared him, that signified his brother's head being blown off. His father was still officially MIA, but Icarus suspected that the last surviving adult that the Huntsman has run over with his car - an obscenely heavily modified Pursuit Special V8 Interceptor, decorated with yellow and black stripes - was him. The man's face had been too pulverised to identify.

The man's semblance, some kind of ball of light that was so bright that it may well have been a second motherfucking _sun_ , had destroyed the building the two of them had hunkered in. His Faunus trait, his dove wings, had been damaged beyond repair by his two day-long stay underneath literal tons of rubble. They regrettably had to be amputated, especially since the porous bones that had given them structure had not fared exceptionally well from being crushed.

Apparently he had warranted enough attention for some AIReD defectors who were taking refuge in the particular encampment he had been interned in, and, after a very confusing exchange between him and a very shifty Atlesian scientist, he found himself the new owner of a prototype set of jump boots - not boots in the traditional sense, rather seen as frames with jets placed strategically to mount onto his lower legs.

After that he had essentially become the White Fang's exclusive contractor, stuck with them as they increasingly became more militaristic, but no more. The favour the White Fang did for him that day was over, gone with the marker that he had signed in the Valean Continental. This was to be his last mission.

Sienna could kiss his pale feather-plucked ass goodbye, because he was going to have no part in whatever atrocities the White Fang were going to commit under their new leadership.

The first place winner of the dumbest things he had seen was this bullshit plan. Shoot down the Bullhead, which was presumably armoured due to its very important cargo, with a high-powered sniper rifle. Sounds easy, right? Dead wrong.

If he screwed up somehow, the best case scenario was that he'd miss the target entirely and Sienna would afterwards personally claw his and Adam's faces off. In a worst case scenario, he would hit the engine of the Bullhead, but then the dying aircraft would somehow slam into their makeshift sniper nest and the two would become an unpleasant stain on the mountain. There were all sorts of ways this could go wrong, but he knew that any one of them would mean the end of him and Adam.

And then there was that thirty metre margin of error. If this was any other mission, he would have aborted it, deeming the attempt a preemptive failure.

But the flight plans were a once in a lifetime chance to 'decapitate the monster,' as Adam had called it. However, in his opinion Adam was a violent radical who couldn't even get his head out of a paper bag if it meant asking a human for help.

He hurriedly loaded his weapon, sliding in a fresh magazine before pulling a slider that caused the barrel's diameter to spiral outwards, increasing the bore of the gun.

Labyrinth truly personified the sniper's motto 'one shot, one kill'. A bolt-action sniper rifle, chambered in .338 Lapua. The rounds he used were armour-piercing by virtue of their tungsten carbide cores, and the rifle itself had a nominal effective range of one thousand four hundred metres. That, however, could be stretched out even further if one had the skill - he had once pulled off a shot at a thousand metres _beyond_ that advised effective range. As such, it was one of the best rounds for the job, as it was perfect for taking out weakspots of vehicles or blowing someone's head off at long range.

Despite the ten-round magazine of high-powered rounds that could easily pierce through even the best body armour out there, the real masterstroke was that the rifle could also transform to temporarily accept 20mm cannon rounds inserted into the breech. Granted, it could only hold one at at time, but the additional firepower and armour-piercing capability was worth it. This time, he needed it.

The 20mm cannon shell - a high-explosive incendiary round, which should be able to make short work of the Bullhead's internal workings - was smoothly inserted into the breech before it was truly loaded by Icarus's left hand cycling the bolt. He could hear the faint, faraway drone of a Bullhead's engines.

It was time.

/-/

Jacques Schnee was annoyed, to put it nicely. Sure, there was proof that the White Fang wanted his head, but Willow didn't have to be so paranoid... especially for _this_.

Besides, in her opinion taking any measures to guard against them actually served to legitimise the White Fang as a credible threat.

His wife had requisitioned an armoured Bullhead from General Ironwood for his flight to Haven Academy. The Vytal Festival was to be held there this year, and she was going there to sign the necessary paperwork for Haven's impressive purchase of Dust for the event. They were surely pulling out all the stops to make this year's Festival memorable, weren't they? Oh well, it's a win for both parties - Mistral and Haven Academy get the publicity they need, while the Schnee Dust Company gets hundreds of million of lien for its troubles.

No, what was really annoying him was the fact that they had to go through this goddamn mountain pass. The winds were already making the Bullhead sway, and the extra weight from the armour plating was just making it worse.

He reached forward from her seat, and grabbed a sick bag. Unbeknownst to many, the Schnee patriarch hated travelling by air as he got airsick very easily - not that he'd let anybody find out of course, lest they make him start flying everywhere. Normally he didn't travel by air, but his wife had seen it fit that he was to fly to the Academy in a fittingly dynamic entrance.

For once he had conceded to her admittedly logical of thought, but now he was seriously regretting it.

The intimidatingly jagged rocks on both sides of the pass spelled death if his Bullhead slammed into them, so he instructed his crew to stick to the middle of the path.

His pilot and co-pilot were top-of-the-line, as was expected, but even they were having trouble with this crosswind.

He gripped the sick bag tighter. Deep down inside, he somehow knew that this one was going to be a rough ride.

/-/

The Bullhead was so close that he could nearly feel the heat from its engines, but he couldn't take the shot. Not yet. He moved his rifle to point down from the cliff edge. The target was flying through the ravine, travelling from their left to their right.

"Adam, distance to target now!" Icarus shouted.

"Seven hundred and ninety metres!"

So close, but so far as well. At that distance, the Bullhead needed to be a bit closer to confirm a hit, but if he waited too long, he risked the thing just flashing by them.

He waited.

Adam raised his voice, now visibly agitated. "What are you waiting for? Take the shot!"

"Shut up except when I ask for data," he growled.

Adam closed his mouth, but he was still visibly grinding his teeth. He, unlike Icarus, hated the Schnees and the SDC with a vengeance... reasons unknown.

Icarus sighed in exasperation. Adam wasn't exactly the most stable of a mission partner, which was a major problem, but he was the most skilled. A moral quandary if he ever saw one.

Adam was now grumbling under his breath of how he was a traitor to the White Fang cause for leaving, and that a _proper_ White Fang member would not even hesitate to take the decisive shot.

Icarus felt the sudden temptation to kick him off of the damn cliff right there and then. If the bastard thought that he could do this himself, he could jolly well do so. Maybe as he fell he could hopefully slam into the target, and by sheer force of will he could accelerate himself to the point that the Bullhead would explode in mid air.

Wishful thinking, he reasoned. He sighed again, this time to vent the mounting frustration in his gut. He had to control himself, however satisfying the prospect of sending his superior officer flying off the conveniently placed precipice was.

This was his last mission, after all. Just a few more seconds until the end. The Bullhead's right engine was just close enough for an almost guaranteed hit.

There. The perfect time to act. His semblance activated with the flicking of a mental switch, slowing down his perception of time and flooding his mind with details. Weak spots in the mechanisms of the aircraft suddenly became incredibly obvious, and those which he could hit suddenly became targets that were relatively easy to hit.

His semblance was quite complicated to explain, somehow.

He could slow down his perception of time ala 'bullet time' in order to pull off otherwise inpossible shots or feats, accurately predict bullet trajectory - his bullets and those of others - seemingly instinctually, as well as being able to 'mark' people to monitor their positions even if they subsequently moved out of sight, and weak points in vehicles or the environment - things like the driver ports of armoured vehicles, pilots in the cockpits of aircraft, exposed fuel tanks or stored ordnance - that could be shot were highlighted to his perception.

It wasn't that spetacular of a semblance, especially since using it for too long at any one time gave him an extremely debilitating headache from the informational overload of his mind, but it was extremely useful nonetheless.

Icarus noted, with a bit of amusement, that one of those targets _was_ the pilot. Perhaps he could take _that_ shot instead.

He took the shot.

When he pulled the trigger, he did not hear the boom or feel the kick - one never does when a shot goes home - but the effect was clear. There was a sudden explosion of blood and gore that splattered onto the glass of the aircraft's cockpit, and the stricken Bullhead plummeted into the abyss below.

"Target down," Icarus said.

"Make sure that the target is dead," Adam replied. "Silber One's ETA is in ten minutes, so make it quick before he arrives for his bombing run."

"Yes, sir." Icarus said, stowing the bipod in which his weapon had rested. "Of course."

/-/

Jacques Schnee startled to the sound of something exploding.

For a moment he thought that the White Fang had launched a surface-to-air missile at his Bullhead and missed, or that they had tried to shoot him down with an anti-aircraft gun. Either way, they certainly were more daring in Mistral than they were in Atlas... the Mistrali leadership certainly had a lot to answer for. But then something else brought him back to reality. A very perilous one, but still.

Yes, indeed, his Bullhead was swaying like a leaf in the wind. More importantly, it was getting rather too close to the jagged cliff sides.

Damn it, I should have just taken the bloody train!" Jacques snarled, getting up to burst into the cabin.

His anger soon melted away into shocked terror, revulsion and a not insignificant amount of mortal peril.

"What the fuck just happened? They're dead!"

The pilot and co-pilot were indeed dead, if the fact that most of their upper torsos now currently decorated most of the cockpit was any indication. Jacques tried valiantly to resist the sudden upwelling of nausea at the sight, and only barely prevented himself from vomiting his rather expensive breakfast all over the floor of the Bullhead's cabin.

From bad to worse, he grimly noted. From the frying pan to the fires of Hell.

The Bullhead listed towards its starboard side. Sooner or later, it would slam into the cliff side and take its passengers to hell along with it.

Jacques, fingers trembling, took out his scroll and sent a quick message to his wife.

"I love you," it read.

He heard the scream of buckling metal, and then nothing.

/-/

Icarus watched the Bullhead slam into the side of the crevice before skidding off and plummeting into the abyss. Before long, he heard the explosion as the Bullhead finally crashed into the bottom of the ravine.

"Adam, notify me via comms immediately if any reinforcements show up. I'm going to check for any survivors."

The unspoken thought between them was that he was going to eliminate any and all survivors. Tragic, but necessary.

The foliage-patterned hood currently draped over his head, which formed part of his stealth 'uniform', was pulled down in place of an oxygen mask that was then strapped onto his face. Unlike Sienna, who thought that making an new regulation that White Fang members now had to wear their Grimm masks at all times when on duty was a good idea at all, Icarus was less of an idealist and more of a pragmatist.

The ghillie cloak he was wearing - essentially a large billowing cloak designed to make him him look like a big bush when crouched - was uncomfortable, but necessary for their kind of mission. A small air tank at his side was connected by a tube to his oxygen mask, and he opened the valve on the tank to access the approximately thirty minutes of oxygen that he had stored for high-altitude work and other emergencies. Effective, pragmatic and with no unnecessary frills whatsoever.

Besides, Grimm masks just made the White Fang look unapproachable as all hell. Not the best move for recruitment or for PR in general.

Inputting a few commands into the interface of his scroll, which was mounted strategically on his right wrist, he activated his jump boots. The White Fang had allowed him to keep the jump boots, even helping to upgrade them so that he could achieve true flight instead of being restricted to rocket-assisted jumps, so that he could retain his ability of flight.

He both appreciated the gesture and knew of its connotations. They wanted him on their side.

He transformed Labyrinth into its glaive form, the rifle shifting into a long pole which was tipped with a fairly long razor sharp blade that had emerged from the rifle's stock. He then leaped off the cliff, his jump boots roaring into life as he did.

/-/

The smell of burning jet fuel pierced Icarus's nose. The site where the Bullhead had finally settled down was at the bottom of the ravine, and it had managed to hit the rocks with such violence that all that was left was somewhat recognisable wreckage.

"Search for survivors, they said," Icarus muttered to himself annoyedly. "There were bound to be some, they said."

The roar of his jump boots' thrusters abated, and the clang of the thrusters' metal frame landing on a piece of torn-off armour plating echoed throughout the chasm. The glaive in his left hand gleamed wickedly in the dim light that was not blocked by the looming mountains around him, while the strong winds made his ghillie cloak billow around him as if he was the main character of some random low-budget action movie. With some measure of apprehensive frustration, he grabbed a fistful of the cloak to rein it in somewhat.

The atrocity he had committed here... Icarus felt something staring at him, but couldn't identify what exactly it was. Perhaps it was the eye of God, fully cognisant of this new sin that he had committed?

A blackened piece of metal and glass started to buzz, off to the side, and light began to emanate from the soot-covered screen.

"What?" Icarus asked under his breath, using the spike on the butt of his glaive to steady himself as he walked towards the object. He picked it up and brushed the spot off before pausing.

There was a call on the scroll, currently denoted as being from the former owner's wife. Oh God.

He pressed the button to accept the call.

"Jacques?"

It was a feminine voice, loving and yet laced with worry. Icarus remained silent.

"Jacques! Answer me!"

Icarus sighed, before answering evenly, "Jacques is dead."

"What?"

"You are speaking to Daedalus. Jacques is dead."

"What? No, no, you're lying..."

"I assure you, madam, that I am not..." Icarus said, before switching to a video call. Now her face was visible; an adult woman with the signature white hair and pale skin of the Schnee family. He took the phone, pointed it at the wreckage, and slowly panned through the entire mess before turning the video call off.

"You... why? Why? Why..." The woman began, before breaking down into sobbing.

"It was the mission..." Icarus began.

"Shut up! 'It was the mission'? Seriously? Are you going to give me that excuse?" The woman, presumably Jacques's wife, seethed. "What's next, 'orders are orders'?"

"Miss Schnee-"

"Couldn't you have walked away, or at least missed?" Miss Schnee screeched. "Would it have killed you to fail just _once_?"

"Yes! Sienna would have killed me if I had missed!" Icarus finally snapped.

"You..."

"Miss Schnee, I am afraid that I could not save your husband, however much I wish that I could," he replied.

"Tell me, what did we do wrong? Tell me what we did so wrong that the White Fang had to issue a kill order on my family! Tell me why my family is the most persecuted one on Remnant!"

Icarus, taken aback, flinched backwards slightly.

"What did he do wrong?" Miss Schnee now sobbed. "He didn't do anything to die for... He didn't do anything…" She trailed off, now weeping wordlessly.

"Nothing, Miss. He did nothing wrong," Icarus's voice took on a sympathetic tone. "The problem is ours."

"Then what is it?"

"Politics. As I said, orders are orders," the assassin said softly, before he sighed. "Did you ever know that the White Fang wasn't always a bunch of blood-drunk terrorists?"

"Yes? Educate me, then."

He started laughing sardonically, before he caught himself. "They actually used to do good, you know? Finding lost children, helping the elderly cross the street, stuff like that. Those were the days that made me stay even though it was falling apart all around me. Leadership changes, power struggles and whatnot, despite all that I still stood firm. Despite everything going to shit around me, I stayed. I hung on because I still had hope that things would turn around eventually."

"What changed?"

"We've started using child soldiers," Icarus muttered.

"Bullshit!"

"We have a lieutenant that's thirteen years old! Thirteen! Can you even believe that?"

"Surprisingly, I can," Miss Schnee said emotionlessly. "I somehow expected that from the White Fang, to be honest. Tell me, is there _any_ difference at all between you and them?

"I've given up!"

"So Jacques died... so that you could hand in your resignation," Miss Schnee said, her voice deadpan. "He died because you saw the end of the road, and decided to end it with a bang before you faded off into mediocrity?"

"No-"

"You monster! Look at you, you sorry drunk... I'll string you up like the filthy beast you are!" Miss Schnee yelled. "You shall not abscond your crimes!"

"Wait-"

"I hope you know that you have made an enemy today. That enemy's name is Willow Schnee, and she will bring the wrath of the SDC on your head down so hard that you'd think that God had taken a personal interest in your life."

"Miss Schnee-"

"Call me Willow, for it is only right that enemies know each other intimately enough," Willow replied, before chuckling. "Few hunters can resist the intoxication of the hunt. Look at you, just the same as all the rest..."

She hung up, leaving Icarus alone with the burning wreckage of her husband's Bullhead and with a new vendetta to be borne on his shoulders.

He knew that he couldn't stay long. Silber Squadron would arrive soon to bomb the crash site into oblivion to ensure that there were truly no survivors, but for now... he had to think.

He was too far gone, but how about Lieutenant Belladonna?

Icarus slid down a piece of metal, slumped into a seated posture, and allowed himself to break down into sobbing.

/-/

 _Four years later, inc. retirement._

Icarus jolted awake.

Where was he? The short answer was that he was on the airship to Beacon. His seat was comfortable at least, but he couldn't help but stare at shock at the person, or rather _persons_ , in his sight.

Blake Belladonna. _Not_ a welcome sight.

Without Daedalus to reign him in... Adam, without his Labyrinth to keep him in check, had become rabid.

The murders, the sabotage and everything else had only increased in scale and frequency, making the now total war between the White Fang and the SDC even more intense than before. As he had predicted, Jacques's death had only made the SDC, and Willow Schnee - whom had been posthumously recommended by her husband to take over the company - hungry for revenge.

And then the bastard had looped in poor Blake into his bullshit. The faraway look in her eyes, like she had seen things that could never be completely forgotten. The way her gaze flitted through the room, scanning for possible threats.

He knew that look, because that was what he saw every day when he looked into a mirror.

The demise of his brother and the presumed one of his father had made him as vengeful as Adam was. He had practically thrown himself into the shadow war that the White Fang was engaging in, at least before the _mission_ , adopting his father's name as a mantle to honour the man's achievements.

He still kept the brass bullet casing that had been next to his brother's corpse. Physical reminders of deeply personal grudges kept the memory of the loss fresh and ever-present. Perhaps the Schnees still had a similar one...

When he left, Adam had made it clear that he wouldn't exactly be welcome anymore, so he had been forced to rely on his contacts to keep track of Blake.

Reportedly, Adam had twisted her, mutating her childish innocence into almost unflinching loyalty. Lieutenant Belladonna became another one of Adam's lackeys, even becoming his girlfriend. Adam was six entire years older than her, but he was fairly certain that their relationship hadn't reached _that_ particular stage yet. At least, his contact was certain.

If it had indeed reached _that_ stage, he'd shoot Adam himself - preferably after emasculating the man with his glaive.

Icarus got out of the Bullhead, careful to keep up with the crowd. Even with a nice brown tweed waistcoat and trousers, paired carefully with a white formal shirt, instead of his old ghillie cloak, she might still be able to recognise him. Best to take the necessary precautions.

His contact - Banesaw, a reliable man whom owed Icarus his life - had planted the idea that the White Fang had been corrupted by the likes of Adam and Sienna, and Blake has apparently latched onto that idea. The fact that she was here, now, proved that. Looks like they were more alike than Icarus thought.

He looked at Blake again, then to the white-garbed figure that she was walking towards.

Sheesh, even her mannerisms made her look like a bitch, from the way she was gesticulating and the tone with which she was positively screeching at the younger girl in front of her.

A man wearing a full-face rebreather, a helmet with an armoured mask that possessed a skull-like visage and a grey greatcoat with armour plating over it was currently arguing with her, something about her waving around a vial of fire dust like a lunatic. A well deserved dressing-down, if you asked this particular marksman.

So what if the smaller red-garbed girl had spilled the white garbed girl's cases of Dust, her complaints of it being 'mined and purified from the Schnee quarry' be damned.

Wait. To quote her, 'from the Schnee quarry'. Who on Remnant would have direct access to a _Schnee_ quarry?

He looked closer at the white garbed girl's face, and recoiled in shock.

Jacques Schnee's lifeless, accusatory eyes flashed in front of his face, if only for a moment.

He blanched, stumbling over to a bench and practically collapsing onto it.

 _He had killed her family._

He only knew for sure that Willow and Jacques were married, but he didn't know that they had raised a family... a family that he had shattered.

One that provoked the very unwelcome memory of his own family. He hadn't contacted his mother or his baby brother in years, and he'd left when he had a new sister on the way. How they'd look at him now, after all that he had done, he had no idea and he didn't dare to find out.

He had failed to save Blake Belladonna in time, before Adam managed to twist her into something unrecognisable.

He had seen Blake at the White Fang base, before he had left. Back then she was so lively, naïve, and innocent. Now? The way she constantly scanned her surroundings for threats only highlighted how much she has changed, and he had failed.

And Weiss... he had _killed_ _her_ _father_. He had gone halfway into making her an orphan, and would likely have had to complete the process had he stayed with the White Fang. Probably his next mission would have been to assassinate Willow.

He had shattered a family, one that he had no right to violate.

And it was all his fault... volunteering to go on that last mission with Adam Taurus. Death begets death, but with misery and sorrow on the side.

He vaguely thought of ending it all, of pointing Labyrinth's barrel into his mouth and 'swallowing the bullet' as they put it. The weapon wasn't loaded, of course, but he still found himself turning the barrel of his rifle towards his own head.

He shook the thought off, shifting his rifle back into its prior position. He couldn't die yet, not before he did his best to fix the mistakes he made.

And as the younger girl garbed in red and black chatted to a blond guy he hadn't noticed before about weapons, he got up from his bench and wiped his tears from his face with his sleeve, before starting to walk towards the gothic spires of Beacon Academy.

The gas-mask wearing man was among them, talking to them jovially about... something about the adverse reactions blondes seemed to have towards him. Ultimately inconsequential, not least because his own hair was actually raven black.

Icarus smiled slightly, despite himself. A bit of optimism now couldn't hurt, after all.

He set off to right the wrongs he had created by his own hand.

 **(Basically, Icarus's semblance enables him to shoot like someone straight outta Sniper Elite. His weapon's rifle form, if you can't really picture it, is a French PGM 338 - chambered in .338 Lapua)**


	3. Auxiliary (Lapis intro)

Lapis frowned. She stood in front of the blank canvas, paintbrush in hand. Sure, she could probably paint some random thing and still make some money from some gullible Atlesian tourist, but she wanted to make something special.

Vacuo, despite being far and away the poorest of the four kingdoms, was the one with the most vibrant culture, and the one which produced the majority of Remnant's most valuable artworks. The Great War had taken a massive toll on the creative minds of Atlas, and Mistral to a smaller extent, and now it was Vacuo's time in the spotlight.

She wanted to create something that would entice the true art connoisseurs, those that had their own private art collections. She envisioned her works becoming the centrepiece of many a collection, smiling to herself as she did, but reality came crashing down again.

She sadly wasn't doing this as a hobby, as the greatest artists had done at the start, but she was doing this for a living. Becoming an emancipated minor at the age of fourteen was truly inconvenient, but that was the law of the land here in Vacuo. Orphanages only provided lodging up until the age of fourteen, and then you were considered an adult.

She sighed, deciding to try wallowing in the memories of her childhood - before the orphanage and the matron with a stick perpetually up her arse - in Valhalla. Maybe she would find something, anything, for some inspiration.

Her last day in Valhalla was also, coincidentally, her birthday. Valhalla, to the outside world, was an independent settlement in the Vacuan desert, built on a natural aquifer that served as their only source of potable water. Basically like any other settlement in Vacuo. What made this one different was that Valhalla was populated entirely by Huntsmen, both active and retired. That made it one of the most heavily defensible places in all of Remnant, making it an impregnable fortress against both human and Grimm.

She could still remember the harsh Vacuan desert sun casting shadows over the many gun emplacements dotting the outskirts of Valhalla, as well as the flak towers jutting out of the settlement itself. Of course, the most heavily defended area was where the Allfather lived. He deserved such protection, being the man whom started Valhalla in the first place. Or so she thought.

After the fall of Valhalla, she had found out that the Allfather's semblance was to manipulate the emotions of others around him. The man had enthralled all around him, creating a whole new societal structure in order to control Valhalla as its overlord, while establishing the Einherjar to safeguard Valhalla as both policemen and border patrol. None of Valhalla's inhabitants, save the Allfather himself, truly knew of what happened behind those walls. But enough daydreaming about what happened behind the closed doors of the Allfather's hall. She was looking for some inspiration, after all.

She had been born to two retired Huntsmen herself, her father being a Vacuan desperado whom, before taking refuge in Valhalla to hide from the long arm of the law, had made his living exclusively from tournament prize money as well as the odd bank heist. Her mother had been a former Atlesian Specialist whom had seen Valhalla as an ideal place to live out her retirement, and had met Lapis's father in the process.

Funnily enough, her parents had met for the first time when her father had attempted to rob her mother at gunpoint. Her mother had subsequently demonstrated the innate strength of a bear Faunus by laying out the hapless gunslinger on his ass. On the bright side, they had exchanged scroll numbers. Things only escalated from there.

She chuckled, despite herself. Her father had always been the more animated and boisterous out of the two, with her mother bringing a much needed dose of sanity to keep the three of them rooted.

She took a moment to look at her as of yet unfinished work. Predominantly sandy colours, she noted. Looks like a still-life landscape was in order. The desert landscape looked mostly finished, and the basic outline of the open-air market was there. Time to lose herself in the details.

She smiled. Any two-bit amateur could paint a decent landscape given enough time, but filling in the details took skill. Making it look _alive_ took a master hand.

Her reverie was broken rather rudely by a loud knocking on her door, accompanied by a curt shout of "Protection money! Give it up now else we're coming back to burn this fucking place down!"

Her bear ears that were poking out of her brown hair, her Faunus trait, folded back on her head. Seriously? Didn't the Legion know better than to come to her doorstep for protection money? Argh, the Praetorian was going to be grovelling on his knees for mercy for this.

" **Maybe the neighbourhood changed hands again. A perpetual gang war tends to do that,"** Lazuli helpfully pointed out.

Lazuli was this... voice... in her head. Does that make her insane? Probably. He had first started talking to her during the fall of Valhalla. She had had no one to talk to except Solis, and even then she didn't really have the chance to talk to him half the time. So she started talking to this voice in her head.

She opened the door, and promptly rolled her eyes. A group of gruff-looking men in hoodies and wearing kabuki masks stared back at her. "Give us two grand within the hour and we'll report to the Boss that you've paid up. If you don't, we'll come back with flamethrowers to bring the message across."

The fucking Diablos? She could swear that the Legion had controlled her area just last week.

" **You didn't see this coming? I would have thought that the constant gunfire would have made it obvious,"** Lazuli snarked.

"I assumed that the Legion was competent enough to hold their turf for once," she mentally replied.

The main city of Vacuo was a shitty place to live. A cesspool of crime, caught up in a three way free-for-all between the gangs that had sprung up. The Diablos, officially named _El Diablos_ were anarchists who had a penchant for freely looting territories they controlled.

The Legion actually kept some semblance of law and order in their territories, which made them the most 'welcomed' of the three gangs by the local populace, their petty bias against Faunus notwithstanding.

The _syndicat des commerçants_ , otherwise known as the Traders' Union, were just suppliers for drug addicts who got high and beat up innocent people in the street, Faunus or not. They also tended to leave a lot of younger addicts that Traders had gotten hooked on their 'product'.

She may have been offended by some of the shit that Legion members said about Faunus, but at least the Praetorian, the enigmatic commander of the Legion, was smart enough to not allow it to get physical. That made them much, much better than the alternative. If she could choose between the subtle racists who actually managed to enforce some form of the law, anarchists who saw any occupied dwelling as a treasure trove waiting to be looted, or drug merchants who actively tried to spread their tainted wares among the innocent populace, she'd choose the Legion any day of the week despite their racism.

"I'll give you the fucking two grand soon, so in the meantime get out of my fucking sight," Lapis spat, slamming the door as she did.

Latching the door behind her, she sighed. She didn't actually have two grand in lien. Now what was she going to do?

She couldn't pay them off, since the two grand she had promised didn't exist. Going to the police wasn't an option, since these days they were so corrupt that the cops had started _joining in_ when gang wars broke out, of all things.

Now she had only one other option left. She particularly disliked it, but it now looked like the only shot she had. Time to call the Praetorian. Or more precisely, her on and off boyfriend, Solis Aurum. Her best friend and lover - most of the time - from Valhalla, the only person she could reliably confide in.

" **It says a lot when the only living person you engage in meaningful conversation with is a gang leader."**

"Shut up, Lazuli. You're not helping," Lapis muttered. She could not, however, suppress the blush that broke out on her face. Surely her social situation wasn't that bad, wasn't it?

" **I don't count as a living person. I'm a voice in your messed up hellscape of your mind and you know it. Can you at least try to clean the place up once in a while? I'm still stumbling over whatever the hell you left in there after the last time you paid Solis a 'late night visit',"** Lazuli deadpanned, as if he was simply commenting on the weather. The blush on Lapis's face reddened even more, a mortified grimace growing on her face.

And then Lazuli brought it all crashing down back to reality with **"HAL 9000 to Dave** **? Our current objective is to call the Praetorian, and it now appears that we have stopped completely."**

Lapis sighed. Where any other inhabitant of Remnant - minus Vacuo - called the police in this sort of situation, she called a mob boss of all people.

"Can I do something in my life without bringing in my day job? It's called a work-life balance, dammit."

" **I am afraid that I cannot do that, Dave**."

The Legion was practically a replacement of the police at this point, due to the rampant corruption in the actual law enforcement of Vacuo. Nowadays, citizens more often than not had to take the law into their own hands, she reflected grimly.

" **Sure, the keeping of law and order has come down to the actual criminals, with a side order of not exactly subtle racism, but you're more well equipped than most. You've worked with the Legion before, and you can do so again,"** Lazuli reasoned. **"Hell, the Praetorian has your number on speed dial. Remember that time he accidentally gave you what amounted to a booty call two months ago? And then you actually took the bait thinking that he was asking you to bust some Scourge drug den?"** If he could, Lapis could have sworn that Lazuli would have been chortling as he said that.

She did remember the misunderstanding, despite her best efforts to forget the experience. More precisely, the circumstances of the experience. The experience itself was actually rather enjoyable, but enough about that. Her mortification, and the accompanying tomato-red blush, returned with a vengeance.

"Alright, enough," she said, breaking out into a bout of chuckling. "Don't dig up my admittedly lousy love life. I'll give the Praetorian a call."

/-/

Solis Aurum lounged on his iron throne. It wasn't the kind of content lounging of someone whom could be considered a warlord, and a successful one at that, but the lethargy of someone who had heard multiple, almost identical variations of suggestions of the actions he had expressly forbidden.

Right now his lieutenant, Olive Meadows, was suggesting that they raise the Legion's protection fees for Faunus, and to give their members the free will to loot Faunus businesses willy nilly. Again.

The Praetorian allowed his forehead to return to its rightful place in the loving embrace of his hand, before letting his hand slide down his face to pinch the bridge of his nose. He knew that forming his gang along the lines of racism was asking for trouble from the start, but everyone had been doing it in the good ol' days. Lapis had been annoyed with the whole premise of his gang, but she had eventually let it pass. Solis definitely didn't subscribe to such beliefs, which had probably saved his life all those years ago. He may be mighty, but Lapis could be terrifying at times.

Sure, he had been fourteen years old when he first founded the Legion, but being a trained aura user with the semblance of causing razor sharp metal spikes to erupt out of any solid surface had gotten him far despite his age.

However, now all that was left of the old guard was the Legion and the White Fang. The Diablos were just puffed up delinquents, and the Scourge was...the Scourge.

Hell, _Ghira_ of all people had managed to get his fingers into this pie. Ghira, the gentleman that Solis somehow _knew_ would never hurt a fly willingly, had started the goddamn White Fang of all things. Sure, they had only met for as long as he and Lapis were hired to be the Belladonna family's tour guides in Vacuo, but Ghira had given off a 'gentle giant' vibe that made Solis seriously doubt whether the White Fang were still his to command.

The White Fang were a former street gang that had ballooned to the point that it could be considered a paramilitary organisation. A legitimate one, if the rumours he heard about them placing troops at Faunus settlements to guard against Grimm attack were true.

A kind gesture, but futile. The Grimm Troupe has made sure of that. They would invariably target the most heavily guarded settlements, if only because the Troupe Master was one sadistic fuck. He liked to see the hope in the eyes of his victims as it slowly transformed into helpless terror.

He shook the thoughts out of his head. His problem was in front of him, right here and right now.

Solis got up from his throne, walking up to his lieutenant. He grabbed the reedy man's shoulders, beginning with the words "That is the most-" before driving his armoured knee into the former lawyer's groin "-stupid idea I've ever fucking heard! If we do that, the damn city is going to be so full of negative emotion that the Grimm Troupe themselves are gonna make a beeline straight for Vacuo!" He all but spat out the last sentence into the now hunched over man's face.

"You know what's Vacuo's population percentage that's Faunus?" He growled. "Forty percent last time I checked! Even if we go through with your shit idea, that's more than a million people we're antagonising! That is going to attract so many Grimm that before long the Troupe Master himself is going to add this city to his tour itinerary!"

He took a deep breath. Some might say that his hatred of the Grimm Troupe was irrational, but Solis felt that they had no right to say that. They haven't seen Troupe Master Grimm casually teleport into a classroom, and then burn alive everyone inside.

They haven't seen the Troupe Master bisect their younger brother with a casual sweep of his arm in front of them.

"And if they still come because you go ahead and disobey my orders anyways? Then I'll make sure to get front row seats for you," He said as he clenched his gauntleted fists. The idiocy of these people sometimes, by God in heaven.

Olive paled.

"So this idea had better _not_ leave this room. Understand?" Solis growled.

"Yes, Sir." Olive whimpered.

The man then promptly sprinted out of the throne room.

He turned to the man's brother, Brad Meadows. Brad could hardly have been more different from his twin brother. Whereas Olive had been thin, reedy and annoyingly independent, Brad was muscular, strong and also loyal to a fault.

"If you get wind of any hint that your brother goes through with his idea despite my disapproval, report back to me," Solis muttered.

Brad nodded in approval. While Olive had been in the law sector for his entire life, and was thus ignorant to the external threats of the world around them, Brad was a veteran from the Vacuan National Guard, and thus knew full well of the dangers posed by of the Grimm. He also knew of the sheer lethality of the Grimm Troupe and the well-deserved terror they inspired, having borne witness first hand to their depravity. The Troupe Master. The Wyrm. The Horseman. Three particular Grimm that he never wanted to see again.

The Praetorian collapsed back onto his throne, fiddling with some buttons at the armrest to activate the massage function of his throne. He could actually feel the tension in his shoulders slowly dissipate, leached away by the automated masseuse. Solis allowed a relaxed grin to emerge on his face.

Feeling his scroll vibrating in his pocket, Solis brought it up to his ear and took the call, without looking at who was calling.

"Hello? Oh, hey Lapis, what's up? Wait, what?" The Praetorian's relaxed grin was now replaced, first with concern and now with blinding anger. "They actually demanded protection money? From _you_? And they're _still alive_? I thought I mentioned _specifically_ to the Diablos that you were _off limits_! Stupid fuckers, they didn't listen to me!"

There was a short pause, in which the faint sounds of Lapis admonishing him for his use of language were heard, before Solis opened his mouth again.

"Okay, fine. What do you want to do about this?"

The reply was unmistakable, the soft volume of it doing nothing to stop it from being heard by everyone present. "Do what we usually do. A show of force, you could say."

"Ah, now I remember why I like working with you in the first place."

"Better the devil you know than the devil you don't."

"The usual place, then?"

"Yep. You know what to do."

Solis looked up from his throne for a bit, scanning the two assembled lieutenants before him, before gesturing for them to leave.

"You heard her. Let's make sure that this time, the lesson sinks in."

Nobody argued with the Praetorian, because arguing with him meant arguing with the Auxilia. Arguing with the Auxilia usually resulted in a swift, gory and brutal end to your life - hence the lack of dissent.

Things moved as they always did.

/-/

Lapis opened the door to her armoury. Well, it wasn't really an armoury, it was just where she kept her weapons and armour.

" **And Gungnir isn't exactly yours, isn't it? It was the Allfather's weapon. Neither is your armour."**

"But the Allfather bequeathed me his power armour and lance in his dying moments. It is mine."

Practically everyone whom had survived Valhalla knew that. In the last of the series of acts that made up the sadistic show that the Grimm Troupe had put up, he had forced the Allfather to pick a pair of the surviving children that Troupe Master Grimm had gathered, and fight them to the death for the enigmatic Grimm's amusement. 'Forced' was putting it lightly. He had possessed the Allfather, something which the children simply couldn't comprehend. The Allfather supposed to be infallible, at least that was what they had believed in and been taught to believe for their whole lives, but here he was before them, reduced to a thrall of the Troupe. The scarlet glow that emanated from the seams of his armour, and behind his armoured, featureless mask, served to rub the message in.

It was truly unfair, given that the Allfather was allowed his power armour and rocket boosted lance, while the unlucky chosen had to make do with standard, unaugmented weapons and no armour.

By the time that it came to her and Solis's turn, the floor of the amphitheater that the Troupe had created in the old market square was slick with the blood of children. The braziers burning with scarlet flame cast their blood red light on the survivors' silhouettes, casting long shadows upon the ground. The Allfather himself was already visibly sobbing, but was unable to yield. The world seemed to be covered in bloodshed, with the sand already seemingly stained crimson. Was it the light, or something more sinister?

When she and Solis found themselves at the wrong end of the subjugated Allfather's forefinger, they already had a strategy. Not a good one, but enough to give them a fighting chance,

The Allfather's armour and lance both had rocket boosters, allowing him to propel himself in a subsonic lance charge that accelerated faster than some aircraft. However, he was vulnerable when recovering from missed charges. So Lapis had taken a long spear in order to exploit the chinks in his armour from at range, while Solis had requisitioned two daggers in order to take advantage of any vulnerabilities that the Allfather could show.

The problem was that it had went _perfectly_. The Allfather had charged at Solis. Both her and Solis dodged successfully, with Solis subsequently using his semblance to pin down the Allfather. Lapis had then drove her spear into the Allfather's side.

One got the feeling that the Allfather had _let_ them strike him down.

The Allfather had beckoned her closer, then asked, "What is your name, child?"

"Lapis, sir. Lapis Ferrum."

"Very well. Establish Odinson protocol."

With that, the massive suit of armour the Allfather wore began to shift.

"Unit designation 'Grimnir' is no longer operational. Transfer neural link to unit designation 'Lapis Ferrum'".

The Allfather flicked a switch on his helmet, depressurising it with an accompanying hiss of air. He then lifted it off, revealing the face of a grizzled older man beneath. Lapis could guess that the man was in his fifties, but he still looked remarkably fit. Well, other than the fact that there was a spear sticking out of his side.

"Put the helmet on to establish the neural link," he growled.

Lapis froze up, staring in shock. This was the Allfather's true face? He only ever wore his helmet in public.

"Hurry up, girl. We don't have much time left," he growled again, this time more agitated but somehow sounding weaker as well.

"I'm truly sorry for putting this burden on you, but it must be done. For Valhalla."

"For Valhalla," she pledged, a sliver of her old determination returning to her.

"For the well-earned right of honoured warriors to finally rest," the massive man before her completed.

Her heart somehow swelled. Here she was, making a pledge to the Allfather himself. A few hours ago, this would have been just a dream for her.

The dream crashed down around her when the Allfather collapsed to the ground. Two massive Alpha Beowolves moved forward to drag his prone form into the shadows.

She heard the clacking of chitinous, razor sharp clawed hands impacting into each other from behind her. The Troupe Master was clapping? What?

"Bravo, bravo. What an ending to one of our more exciting shows. But I'm afraid that we'll have to let the curtains fall now."

The thin, cultured yet somehow sinister voice of Troupe Master Grimm rang out behind her.

She turned, and saw a nightmare. The Troupe Master was in the process of smothering Solis in his cape. She watched helplessly as the boy's struggling slowly diminished into catatonic twitching.

The Troupe Master loosened his hold on Solis, letting him slump, unconscious, to the ground. Lapis screamed in horrified fright.

"Unfortunately, we need to pack up for out next _show_. The way we pack up and move is a trade secret, so none of the audience may be cognizant of what goes in around them. If we do let you find out how we do things, my queen will be displeased. Displeased enough to tie up the loose ends that I _intentionally_ leave behind."

The lanky, humanoid Grimm form shrugged. "I suggest that you put on that helmet. Establishing the neural link will knock you out anyways."

He turned to the Nuckelavee that had strode forwards to flank him. "Or I could just let the Horseman kick you in the head."

Lapis screamed even more. "I'll take the helmet!"

"As I predicted you would." The slender Grimm drawled. He somehow sounded smug, even with no sign of a mouth to speak with.

Lapis began to heft the helmet with trembling hands, slowly lifting it onto her head.

And as she lowered the helmet over her eyes, she heard the Troupe Master's footsteps slowly move away from her.

She heard the enigmatic Grimm say to himself, "Next stop, the Mistralian town of Kuroyuri. Let's give them a show to remember, shall we?"

Then, Lapis let the helmet settle on her head, and her world went black.

All she could remember was the pain. Imagine a migraine, but a thousand times worse. Pain coursing through her head and through her brain, permeating every part of it. She screamed in agony, as just about when she couldn't take it anymore, the point she knew the pain would make her black out, the pain suddenly stopped.

" **Neural link established,"** a smug voice rung out in her ears. **"Honestly, I'm surprised. There's a reason that armour like this isn't mass-produced. The pain from establishing the link sometimes causes an aneurysm in the brain, causing fatal internal bleeding when it inevitably bursts. However, there may still be some side effects."**

"What side effects?" She asked unsteadily.

" **Personality leakage and mental damage. You might still be able to communicate with me and vice versa even without your armour. Moreover, your personality might change as a result of my integration into your brain."**

"Essentially, nothing I wouldn't have already thanks to this bullshit."

" **Yes, pretty much. What do you wish to call me?"**

"Lazuli? Does that sound good to you?"

" **Yes. From now onwards, you may refer to me as Lazuli."**

"Great."

" **Now... it looks like it's time for you to wake up."**

She cracked open her eyes, wincing at the harsh sunlight burning her retinas, and the demented Troupe was...gone? The teby had basically vanished, and all of the survivors, which were entirely made up of children, were stirring on the desert sand. There was no sign of the sadistic Troupe Master, nor was there any sign of his terrifying Troupe. The Wyrm and the Horseman were gone. The hordes of Grimm that had risen out of the ponds of tar-like drool that the Wyrm had left sitting the landscape were gone.

And now, much too late, the children took note of the carnage around them, no doubt placed there for their benefit by the Troupe.

The mutilated remains of their parents, and the bodies of those unfortunate enough to be struck down by the man supposed to protect them, surrounded the children.

Some of the would-be survivors lost their minds to this spectacle, turning whatever weapons they had obtained on themselves. The blood of children soaked into the desert sand, already saturated with the blood of many other young lives.

Lapis gazed at the decapitated heads of her parents through the optic sensors of her new armour, making eye contact with their lifeless eyes, and time lost all meaning to her.

At least, until tragically late reinforcements from Shade Academy arrived. There was some confusion between Lapis and the other Huntsmen, as due to the fact that Lapis was now wearing the Allfather's complete set of power armour - despite the fact that she definitely did _not_ remember wearing it - the teams sent from Shade had thought that _she_ was the Allfather. The fact that his lance Gungnir was in her hands didn't help matters.

The bulkhead of heavy armour plating that completely covered her face, leaving only a smooth surface, didn't exactly make her the most friendly looking face in the crowd. However, there wasn't much of a crowd, as there were all of eleven survivors out of a settlement of thousands.

Luckily, Vacuo's orphanages were not the most discerning of people and thus Lapis and Solis had found a place to live.

For a while, at least.

Lapis took up the familiar form of Gungnir, flipping it around in her right hand until the armour plates that counted as a hand guard were covering the top part of her hand. The lance was an expensive weapon to use, requiring Fire Dust for the rocket thrusters and Lightning Dust power cells for her own little addition.

She triggered Gungnir's transformation, watching it shift in her hands. The hand guard and point of the lance retracted into its core, revealing a central barrel surrounded by an idly spinning cooling system that reminded Lapis of the innards of a radial engine. The whole thing was protected by plates of armour that adequately protected the mechanism while still exposing it to the air.

A handle popped out of the top of the weapon, which Lapis promptly grabbed and hefted to her hip.

She and Solis had found a stolen SDC mining laser among the loot they had won from an abandoned warehouse that used to belong to the Diablos around two years ago. She then had the absolutely brilliant idea - at least, she thought it was - to integrate it into Gungnir. It turned out that Gungnir's design lent itself admirably to their schemes, and after incorporating the former mining tool into her weapon, they had tested it out against a bunch of Traders' enforcers that were trying to move into the residential district.

They had discovered two things. Firstly, the improvised weapon took a bit of time to charge up and said charging was accompanied by a menacing whirring noise that correspondingly got louder as the laser charged. Secondly, the weapon was _obscenely_ powerful. Although the laser could only operate in six second bursts, one horizontally sweeping burst had literally swept the street of Traders-hired thugs. What little bits were left had been flash burned so badly that they could have been mistaken for charcoal.

The knocking on her door came back with a vengeance. "The two grand! Now!"

" **Shall I activate the armour for you?"**

"Yes," she cheerfully said. She charged up the laser, eliciting an ear-piercingly high-pitched whine, before she gently pushed open the door - it was _her_ door, after all, and she really didn't want to pay for another one.

"Surprise, motherfuckers!"

Soon enough, the assembled lowlifes in front of her front door were vaporised. They might as well have never existed, honestly.

/-/

Solis waited in the driver's seat of the unmarked white van, sweating under his armour, poncho and cowboy hat. He fiddled with the inert form of his weapon, something that looked like a crossbow sans strings. On that convex head was a plasma emitter.

Lapis had asked to meet him like this, but now he was getting impatient. There was also the fact that she had asked him to park outside a school. Of all the places, why a school? Parents were already pushing their children away from the stereotyphical vehicle of a child kidnapper, which begged the question of Lapis's intentions.

He checked his watch. Lapis should be here by now. Why was she so late? Sooner or later the police would get suspicious, or one of the concerned parents surrounding him would call them to report a pedophile lurking outside a school, and said police would look into the van and see two of the Legion's elite fully equipped for battle. That would not end well at all.

A knock on the passenger side of the van served to answer his latter question. He unlocked the passenger door and a massive figure in power armour slid into the seat next to him.

"You're late," he muttered.

"Sorry. Got delayed by some Diablos outside my house asking for protection money," Lapis replied, her voice taking out a disturbingly chipper tone.

"What did you do to them?" Solis asked, knowing he would regret the answer.

"Ever heard of the permanent shadows of Mantle? People vaporized so fast by the laser lance strike that they left permanent shadows in the walls they were in front of?"

"Don't elaborate further, please. I need to keep my head clear."

Solis hated the fact that they had both become so inured to bloodshed, but that was a fact of life on the streets of Vacuo. Luckily, the vast majority of the criminals in Vacuo, whether in gangs or operating independently, had learned to respect the 'hands-off' rule for civilians. Not outright making the civilians' lives hell was the only counterargument they had against the National Guard simply declaring martial law. That and the fact that if the National Guard did in fact declare martial law, a major civil war would break out.

 _But_ , and that was a very important but, the violence between the three factions was still very much out of control as compared to the crime levels in other kingdoms. A less eloquent person would call it a clusterfuck of biblical proportions.

And here they were again, two people against the world.

"Hey, Lapis. Isn't this just like old times? Just the two of us against god knows how many on the other side?" Solis quipped, only for him to jolt in surprise as someone cleared his throat in the back seat.

"Excuse me, boss? I'm here as well, in case you forgot," Brad muttered. The stocky man, clad in a set of khaki robes akin to those of desert nomads and wearing a metal cuirass and bracers over said robes, was lounging in the back seat. A bulky-looking contraption was strapped to his left wrist over the bracer and his weapon - an assault rifle that could transform into a spiked flail - laid on the seat next to him.

"God dammit Brad, can you at least make some sort of noise back there. I dunno, snore or something? At least let me know that there's actually someone in the backseat," Solis complained.

"All right boss. I'll see what I can do," the oddly quiet man replied. He honestly was a reliable lieutenant, just a little... off-putting at times.

Lapis looked at his weapon, which was currently in its ranged form, and nodded in approval. A Kalashnikov-style weapon always earned a healthy amount of respect from her.

The story went that Antonin Kalashnikov, an old veteran veteran who fought in a singular war hundreds of years before the Great War - the war to end all wars - had noticed during his time in the Mantle Armed Forces that soldiers rarely, if ever, utilised the full power of their rifle caliber weapons, and that the resulting slower rate of fire was not a good trade-off in battle. So, after the war's end and seeking to make a living after losing most of his right leg in battle, he created the first example of a series of rifles that would eventually be called 'Kalashnikov rifles', after their inventor.

What made them unique was that they were the first to put an automatic weapon in the hands of a single infantryman, instead of being squad-operated as most contemporary automatic weapons were back then. While they were not the most accurate of firearms, and had seen an official terminology change to that of _Sturmgewehr_ \- which meant 'assault rifle' in Atlesian - the models that were still being produced, and chambered in the by now obsolescent but still in-production 7.92x33mm Kurz round, were still good enough to do the job and packed a serious punch that was not to be messed with.

"We're here. Gear up and roll out. Remember, our whole purpose here is to destroy the Diablos' stronghold in this district, so go out guns blazing," Solis said.

He had transformed his weapon from its inert crossbow-esque shape into a plasma rifle - although it was more like an energy SMG with a correspondingly bullshit rate of fire and comparative lack of range - as he got out from the driver's side door, emptying bursts into the heads of the two guards at the gate of the abandoned factory. They dropped spinelessly, and headlessly, to the tarmac.

Brad got out of the back of the van, hunkering down in the guard post. A group of thugs, their weapons drawn, had run out of the warehouse, presumably to check out what the commotion was. A full-auto spray from Brad's assault rifle cut them down before they knew what was going on.

He then opened the gate, allowing Lapis and Solis to dash into the loading bay of the factory premises. He hunkered down in the security booth with his assault rifle, pointing it at the doorways that led out of the building before eventually getting up when it became clear that there was no one else to shoot.

"Brad, Lapis, breach the factory and take out everyone inside. I'll watch your backs in case any reinforcements show up," Solis ordered, hefting his plasma rifle.

Brad activated the contraption on his left arm while his assault rifle shifted into a spiked flail in his right hand. The thing on his wrist then proceeded to transform into a large wooden heater shield, with metal studs jutting out at the centre.

"Behind me, Auxilia. The Praetorian is watching us, so let's not fuck this up, shall we?"

Lapis fell in behind his shield, charging her laser as she did.

And as Brad bust through the factory door with his shield, Lapis moved into position to sweep any opposition with her laser.

Then she realised, much too late, what exactly was in the building. Crates upon crates of munitions and weapons. The factory was a _weapons stockpile_.

"Fuck!" Brad yelled. "Hold your fire!"

However, his warning came much too late.

" **Did you just fire your laser in a building full of explosives?"**

"Yes. Yes, I did," she muttered dejectedly. "Fuck my life."

 **"Indeed."**

Then, the stored munitions exploded, the whole building went up in smoke, and the whole operation turned FUBAR.

/-/

Solis cursed under his breath as the shockwave from the explosion knocked him to the ground. What had those two done? Getting up, he looked behind him and saw that the factory was now a blazing inferno.

He then looked towards the entry gate and cursed again. Reinforcements had arrived. Diablo thugs decked out in Kevlar body armour and full face helmets, as well as being armed with automatic rifles - brand new G36 assault rifles fresh from the assembly lines of Heckler and Koch, not the older Kalashnikovs that he had otherwise seen the Diablos equipped with - jumped out of the backs of Conqueror IFVs, mounted on which were tiny turrets armed with 20mm auto-cannons, 7.62mm coaxial machine guns, and ATGMs that turned menacingly to point in his direction.

A tracked armoured vehicle toting a massive cannon, which Solis recognised as an Challenger MBT, rumbled into view behind the IFVs and turned towards him to absolutely ruin his day. The tank's gun moved to face him, staring him down with the massive maw of its 120mm main cannon.

"How the fuck did the Diablos get that much firepower?" Solis muttered to himself, firing bursts of blue-white plasma that melted the tracks of the IFVs while dodging machine gun fire before transforming his rifle back into its inert form, splitting it into two crescent-shaped plasma blades. "More importantly, where did they get it? I want some of that for myself."

He channeled his semblance into the ground, turning the entrance of the factory grounds into a forest of bladed death. The thugs that had already disembarked from their vehicles hung limply from their metal blades that had suddenly materialised from the ground and impaled them. Solis frowned; there were still the vehicles to deal with. The problem with his semblance was that the metal spikes erupted too _slowly_ ; they lacked the velocity to punch through anything more resistant than light vehicular armour. In other words, impaling a tank was out of the question.

The auto-cannons and coaxial machine guns of the IFVs opened fire, spitting a steady stream of 20mm high explosive shells and 7.62mm tracers at his position. Solis dived behind the rusted remains of what had used to be a shipping container, transforming his two curved plasma swords into twin plasma pistols. He emptied shot after shot into the turrets, doing nothing except creating pockmarks of glowing craters in the metal that held the cannons.

"Dammit," Solis bit out angrily to himself. "Too far away to hit anything useful."

To be fair, that was him just testing out his luck. But then again, would he actually _need_ the Legion if he could kill armoured vehicles with his own two pistols? Perhaps it was him just being stupid, then.

A singe unarmoured thug dashed out from behind the IFVs with what appeared to be a single-shot grenade launcher in his hands. Both Solis and the thug fired, the thug's grenade bouncing off the roof of the rusted container and coming to a stop at Solis's feet. Solis's shot popped the thug's head like a fleshy balloon, causing his body sans head to fall back into the vehicle like a sack of bricks.

The Praetorian dived away from the grenade just as it detonated, splattering the immediate vicinity with a sticky substance that began to burn merrily - even while stuck onto the disused stack of rusted metal girders that Solis had been using for cover.

"Napalm grenades?" Solis muttered in shock. He was pretty sure they were banned after the Great War, in the Vytal Convention alongside literally every other chemical weapon known to mankind and some that weren't, but he guessed that criminals didn't really care about laws in the first place.

Suddenly, he saw a radiant beam of blue light flash in front of his eyes. He raised his arms to shield his retinas from the blinding light, and when he lowered them, he saw that one of the IFVs had been cut in half, the seam along which it had been cut still glowing with heat. He couldn't help but let a smile form on his face.

Lapis was here to save his sorry arse. Again. Hopefully without killing him in the process.

That smile was almost instantly wiped off his face when he saw the tank's turret swivel to face his new position. Staring down the barrel, he saw the unmistakable silhouette of a shell primed to fire. His aura was already drained from the use of his semblance and the subsequent firefight, and he somehow knew, intuitively, that a hit from the cannon in front of him would put him down for good.

To put it delicately, he was well and truly screwed.

"I'm sorry, Lapis. Looks like it's the end of the road for me," he whispered.

He closed his eyes, and as the roar of the cannon reached his ears, he prayed.

And he waited.

Was this death? A deafening boom that seemed to crack the air, accompanied by searing heat and the whine of…mechanical servos? What?

He cracked open his eyes and saw that a massive hulking armoured figure was embracing him, using its armoured shell to shield him. Smoke poured from its back, making it obvious that the armoured colossus had taken the shot for him, saving his life.

"Oh god! Lapis! Tell me you're alright!" He yelled.

The armoured figure remained silent.

"Lapis! Are you okay?"

Then, he heard the armoured giant in front of him start chuckling.

"Solis," Lapis laughed. "You owe me one for this." She sounded as cheery as usual, but if her body language was any indication, she was _monumentally_ pissed.

As the rockets on her armour shot into life, thrusting herself into the fray, Solis couldn't help but almost feel sorry for the poor gangers that had tried to kill him. Almost.

He wasn't going to stop her, anyways. One does not bite the hand that possesses the strength to pluck out your jaw like a man plucking mangoes from a tree, and Solis has the feeling that stopping her would be more trouble than it was worth.

/-/

Lapis, with her semblance active at full force, barely felt the impact of the canister shot slamming into the back of her power armour... the innumerable tungsten balls pattered off of her armoured back like so much rain. There was a benefit of suddenly weighing forty four tons in two seconds, after all. The concrete under her boots started to crumble due to the massive weight, while Lapis tried to direct her rage to more useful ends.

Those bastards had tried to kill her friend! They would _die_ for this, she was sure of that. The only question remaining was how _slowly_ they would die.

She turned away from Solis, and primed her armour's rocket thrusters. She boosted towards the remaining IFV, kicking up a dust cloud that billowed out behind her. Then, she activated her semblance, her armoured feet slamming into the floor of the factory grounds and gouging out great furrows of the already abused concrete.

Having a semblance that increased her weight but not her mass via altering the strength of gravity being exerted on her body allowed her to change her relative mass from her default human state of around ninety kilograms to more than eleven tons in less than a second, was a real asset here.

She barged into the front of the IFV with enough force to flip the vehicle over, using her left hand to help it along its path. Priming Gungnir's lance form with her right hand, she thrust it forwards into the vehicle's underbelly, the weapon's own rocket thrusters kicking into life as she did. Time seemed to slow down as her lance plunged into the vehicle, puncturing its fuel tank and setting its flammable cargo alight. The IFV burst into a blazing inferno in front of Lapis's merciless stare. She kicked off the flaming wreck, and watched as it clattered to a dead rest on the crumbling concrete underfoot.

It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. The flames danced in front of her eyes, and as she listened to the dying screams of the vehicle's occupants, she grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame. The scarlet flames had taken all she had loved, and now, as she impassively watched people whose names she didn't even know burn alive in front of her, she found that she didn't care.

" **-apis? Lapis? Are you in there?"** A voice in her head shouted desperately. **"I know that we nearly lost Solis there, but you can't lose yourself now! Not now, not ever!"**

"Lazuli?"

" **Yes, obviously it's me. Unless you picked up another voice in your head to dally with? I feel betrayed."**

"Oh, shut up," she rolled her eyes. She still lowered her weight back to baseline human, relaxing the heightened gravitational force she was imposing on herself to the usual nine point one meters per second despite her disdain at the admittedly sound advice.

She moved over to the tank, shifting Gungnir to its laser mode as she did. She _could_ charge it as she ran, but that was asking for trouble. She wasn't sure whether it would just break if she dropped it while it was charging its laser, or if it would vaporise everyone in a two kilometre radius in a massive explosion. Lapis definitely didn't want to try out that theory now, so she moved into position before charging it.

As she moved, she saw someone wearing a goddamn suit and tie of all things scramble out of the tank's turret hatch - the commander's one if she wasn't wrong - and jump off, already running as he hit the ground. Lapis aborted the laser charge, releasing the excess energy in a hiss of hot air, before shifting Gungnir back to its lance form and couching it in her right arm. She let the rocket thrusters on her weapon and armour pulse into life once more, propelling her at speeds that only aircraft regularly achieved, before ramming full force into the armoured side of the tank.

Her blistering speed, as well as the additional half a ton of mass already conferred onto her by her monolithic suit of power armour, proved to be more than enough to seal the armoured vehicle's fate despite her only being at her baseline relative mass. Her lance punched into the tank's ammunition rack, setting off the shells inside and causing a chain reaction that resulted in the turret of the hapless vehicle being blown out of its housing from the force of the explosion. Lapis unsurprisingly didn't move an inch, instead forcibly pushing the smoking wreck off of her lance before vaulting over to pursue the running man.

As she saw the man run down the deserted street, she primed her rocket thrusters and flew forward again, coming to a stop right behind the man. The tip of her lance burst through his gut in a visceral spray of blood. It looked... delightfully crimson, almost appealing in its colour.

" **Now, now, remember what I said about going into a blood rage? Save it for the Grimm Troupe, if we ever stumble upon those bastards again."**

"You know you're fucking screwed, right? I'm a Diablo underboss, cousin of the fucking Capo himself, so he ain't gonna be holding back when he beats your sorry face to a pulp," the now revealed underboss hissed. "You don't have any street cred either, so since you're just some mercenary, the Legion is gonna drop you so fast your head will spin. Why not tell me your fucking name, anyway? Not as if it's gonna do ya harm... for now."

Lapis grinned. Oh, the bliss of ignorance... how it amused her.

"I've got a name, bastard. Does 'Auxilia' ring any bells?"

To give the man some credit, he did. A darkening stain started to form on his pants, either from fright or the loss of his bodily functions as his body finally registered that it was dying.

"Go fuck yourself…" he whispered, his legs giving way under him and allowing him to slide limply off of the shaft of Lapis's lance. She then walked over and brought her armoured boot down on the man's head, smearing the resulting bloody mush onto the pavement. The carrion-feeders would feast tonight, at least.

"How poetic," she snorted. "Just what I was going to say."

" **A fittingly faceless end to a brainless man. Too bad he hadn't found much of a use for that head in the first place**."

"Indeed he didn't."

She then walked over to Solis and Brad, the latter hunkering behind his shield and with his gore-flecked flail at the ready, in case more reinforcements arrived. The former had just finished beheading the last surviving gangster with his twin crescent plasma swords, the unfortunate man's comrades already lying in pools of their own blood.

"Now... what was that favour I owed you?" Solis asked nervously.

"To drive me home. No way in hell I'm walking back in this getup."

She could probably have heard Solis sigh in relief from across the street, if how loud the sound was was any indication.

/-/

"So... you've actually been accepted to Beacon?"

"Yeah. Apparently having a bullshit amount of combat experience and _surviving the motherfucking Troupe_ was good enough for whoever was vetting the applications."

"What did you put in your application? Anything that would compromise the Legion's credibility?"

"Nah, just some of our more legit jobs together," Lapis shrugged - the very action alone was enough to shake up the rickety van.

Somehow it had survived the fighting, but it has not escaped unharmed. Bullet holes pockmarked the entire right side of the van, but the passenger's side was on the left, so that was Solis's problem. Brad on the other hand was snoozing in the back seat, and it was still a mystery how the man managed to sleep slumped over backwards without snoring.

"You're really leaving? Tomorrow?"

"You'll actually miss me? I'm touched."

The van spluttered to a stop on front of Lapis's much abused front door. The wood was already scratched and dented in multiple places, but it still look welcoming to her. Home was home, after all.

"I won't be seeing your ugly mug for a while, so don't get yourself killed, alright?" Lapis offhandedly remarked.

"Well, about that…" Solis stammered. "You see... I'm going to be attending Shade Academy, myself. I can't go all the way to Vale, I have the Legion to run, and I'll have to stay in Vacuo to make the major decisions. I still want to be a Huntsman, though."

"What?" Brad jolted awake. "Then who's going to decide the day-to-day stuff?"

"You, Brad. What, you think Olive is up to the task?"

"Nah, of course not. He'd plunge Vacuo into civil war by next week if you gave him the post."

"Alright, then," Lapis smirked. "I'll leave you two to your decision making then. Remember what I said about staying alive, Solis. You have one job, so don't fuck it up." She jabbed her finger in Solis's direction before jumping out of the beat-up van and stepping back into her own home.

She passed by the unfinished painting, pausing next to it as she considered finishing the art piece, before she eventually walked past the easel to her room. She needed to pack up for tomorrow, after all.

Besides, she could always finish it up when she came back from Vale.

Right?

 **(Alright, then. We're nearly there, people, and I'll be diving into the Bloodborne stuff soon, next chapter to be precise. You'll notice it, trust me, I just need to get all this worldbuilding done. This is a Bloodborne Crossover, after all. And yes, the Grimm Troupe was actually inspired by the DLC of the same name from Hollow Knight. Team Cherry, carry on.)**


	4. Sanguine (Carmine intro)

**(Carmine's weapon is heavily inspired by the fan-made art book: Hunters of Royal Blood Maidens, but with a little handheld Lewis gun - it turns out that the Russian Empire did purchase ten thousand of these things in 1917, so it's a drum-fed LMG chambered in 7.62mmR - twist to bring it into the RWBY setting. It's great - the art book, that is - so do check it out!)**

Carmine polished her weapon, wiping at the blade of her silver zweihander with a silk cloth to get the last smidgens of soot off. The long blade of her Clarent Sanguinius gleamed in the moonlight, while her greatsword's clockwork sheath laid to the side. She found cleaning the weapon rather meditative, to be honest. That was the whole point. She needed to think. To contemplate what she was going to do in the near future. The moonlight shined in from her window, as it always had been. Her father had told her stories about the sun, a celestial body that far outshined the moon she was so familiar with. But she was sure that that was all there was to them. Stories.

She flipped the sword, swinging the blade and feeling the sharpened edge cut through the air. This weapon might as well be a part of her, something she had been given to treat as equivalent to her life. This blade _,_ the Clarent of St Sanguinius, the weapon of the first traitor which had brought the cursed blood to Cainhurst, required both strength and vigor to utilise properly. Her father at least felt that she definitely had both traits covered. She smiled to herself. Of course she had quite literally managed to make this massive sword work. Vilebloods were weird like that. After all, her father had not earned the name of the Bloody Crow for nothing.

"[NOTIFICATION] I recommend that you move to the throne room as soon as possible. Your father has probably prepared your exit trial by now," GEMINI chirped electronically.

The pod, for there was no other way to describe him, pointed at the door of her room. A white painted boxy chassis that Carmine knew could contain one of a multitude of weapons systems floated above ground, supported by anti-grav units in his bottom. Two spindly robotic arms dangled under the box, stemming from behind the pod, one of which was now gesturing at the door of her room.

"Acknowledged. Relocating to throne room now," she offhandedly replied, magnetically locking her sheathed sword while getting up from her workbench, before opening a large cabinet to reveal what looked like a medieval suit of plate armour.

However, there was hardly anything medieval about it at all. The ceramic-steel composite plates were definitely a modest touch, as was the deflector shield projector on her left gauntlet. It projected a convex disk of shimmering hexagonal panels that measured around a metre in diameter, and it proved to be useful at either deflecting or outright blocking both melee and ranged attacks. She could also project a larger convex rectangle shield wall that was enough to cover her and probably a few other people, but it was comparatively weaker, only able to block and deflect bullets while all but ignoring melee attacks.

She checked the charge of her shield projector. One hundred percent. Perfect. She strapped her armour on. The armour had been inspired by a walk she took a few years ago with her father through the castle armoury. She had found an ancient suit of plate armour, with a faded blue and gold surcoat draped over its torso and coming down to dangle at barely above knee height.

"Daddy, what's that?"

"Oh, this old thing? This was the armour of one of the Elite Knights. At least, that is what we know from the archives."

"Where did it come from?"

"The Elite Knights, you mean? Well, I confess that even the archives do not know. The name of the kingdom these Knights came from has been lost, but what we Vilebloods know is that this particular knight started the noble house of Cainhurst, and commissioned the very castle we live in today."

She had made her armour in its very image, even to the most minute details. She slid down the visor of her helmet, covering her entire face save for a slit at eye level for her to see and holes in the visor for her to breathe through.

"GEMINI, your charge status?" She asked. Her voice sounded muffled to her ears through both the visor and the helmet, so she prepared to ask again in case GEMINI had failed to hear her, but the pod had other ideas, it seemed.

"[DATA] Ninety eight percent. This unit has charged its batteries relatively recently," the unceasing spot of blue light on what could be taken for the pod's singular eye moved towards her direction, sliding along the bordered circle in the centre of his face that served as an eye socket.

Oh right. GEMINI's retractable solar panels, she had forgotten about them. Now how about his combat modules?

"GEMINI, conduct an ammunition and weapons check."

"[DATA] All weapons systems are at optimum condition. The automatic shotgun module is flawless, and all ammunition stores for all types of ammunition are at full capacity," the robotic assistant paused for a moment, seemingly contemplating his next words, before adding "[QUERY] Are you ready to face your father's trial? Your behaviour appears to match up with that of those trying to 'delay the inevitable' so to speak."

"Affirmative," Carmine sighed, trying to let her nervousness drain out with the sigh. "We should move now."

With that, she cracked the door open, and began the long trek to the throne room of the castle. Dashing down the spiral staircase that led to her destination, Carmine could not help but wonder how she could have moved faster without the stairs. The irony was almost unmissable. Cainhurst was technologically proficient enough to produce AI pod assistants and deflector shields, yet they could not make something for internal travel in buildings? As she slid down the ladder - a ladder of all things - to a lower level, she looked at the rafters above her. Maybe she could install a few remotely controlled pulleys and motors there. A few cables, a counterweight and a platform would also be required. It could work, she told herself, but what would she call it in the first place? An automatically descending or elevating platform…

Suddenly an idea popped into her head. An elevator! That was what she was going to call it.

Entirely forgetting to slow her descent, the speed of her fall caused her legs to slide out from under her and thus clearing the way for her to fall on her ass. The fall elicited a surprised yelp of pain, but thankfully nothing else, though that was probably due to the plate armour she wore.

Well, that was what she got for leaving her head in the clouds. Nevertheless, she decided to suggest the idea to her father. Who knows? Maybe he wouldn't turn her idea down again?

/-/

"No, Carmine, I know what you are thinking, but we just cannot install an _elevator_ of all things in the castle. The masonry will not be able to take the strain, not to say anything about the _wooden_ rafters," the Bloody Crow deadpanned.

His full face helmet made it difficult to see his emotional state, but the fact that his black feathered wings, akin to a crow's, were fluttering behind him signified that his patience was wearing thin. "Now then, on to the real reason I called you here. Since you have reached approximately seventeen years of age - at least, according to the chronometers in the castle - thou art to undergo a test to ensure that you are ready for whatever trials the waking world may throw at you."

"What might that trial be, o father of mine? A trial by combat?"

They were in the main throne hall of the Castle; a vast space luxuriously adorned with no shortage of fine fabrics and gilt decorations. Hundreds if not thousands of incense candles burned merrily on gold chandeliers, while the solid marble floor was somewhat covered by a long scarlet carpet that ran all the way from the entrance to the foot of the two thrones. The throne to Camrine's left remained empty, save for a jewel-encrusted crown placed on a red velvet cushion. The throne on the right, however, held all the power in the world.

There was a suit of armour on the left throne, forged out of some kind of silvery metal to form war plate that almost blinded Carmine with its lustre - even in the minute quantities of moonlight that were able to slip through, along with the soft yellow glow of uncountable sanctified candles. Two intricately forged gauntlets with fingers tapering into bladed talons gripped the armrests of the throne, drawing the armoured figure into a suitably regal straight posture, while a crimson cape coloured in the same vibrant shade of red as arterial blood was draped over the armour's shoulders to fall neatly over its back.

The armour itself was intricately engraved with innumerable holy symbols and blessed scriptures, and the ever so slight curves it bore implies that it was meant for a female. The armour's helmet bore a faceless visor rather like Carmine's own, but different in a way - it was made of two segmented plates that could be drawn up to reveal the face, but the bottommost plate drooped to form a beak-like protrusion over the chin. Four vertical slits on the visor allowed for ventilation and sight, and they glowed with a harsh red light that seemed to pierce Carmine's very soul with its gaze alone.

Indeed, that was the only sign that the Queen herself was still alive. Connected to the armour and the throne on which it sat were uncountable tubes and wires, all devoted to the singular task of keeping the Queen's soul among the living. For all the grandeur and majesty of the armour, it was nought but an incredibly elaborate sarcophagus.

That, ladies and gentlemen, was Queen Annalise of the Vilebloods. May the Holy Majesty of Cainhurst live forever!

"Yes," the Crow replied. Carmine checked where his hands had gone. They had not reached for the hilt of his Chikage, eliciting a feeling of confusion and unease from her. What was he planning?

Then, she saw the heavily armoured golem loom over her. More than four metres tall, barring the metallic antlers that would look more in place on a stag than on the top of his helmet, it stared at her with a baleful red gaze through the eyeholes of its helmet. It held a broadsword, almost two metres long, that was longer and broader than most greatswords in its right hand, while in its left hand it held a teardrop-shaped kite shield that would serve most admirably as a new bed frame or a door for her room.

But what was most terrifying about it was the on its knee-length off-white surcoat, around the same shade as ivory except for the liberal amount of bloodstains on it, except for the symbol of an eye inside a traingle. The triangle and eye gleamed a bright gold, the same light as the celestal bodies that she sometimes saw through her telescope. A similar symbol adorned its massive kite shield, which was now pointed directly at her.

What was so scary about the triangle and eye was what it connoted. The symbol of the Church Executioners. Their first siege on Cainhurst crippled the Vilebloods, made them powerless to stop the second.

The second siege, if it could even be considered a siege, was made single handedly by a crazed former Executioner named Alfred. He had used his cursed Logarius Wheel to grind the Undying Queen herself into nothing more than paste.

Carmine clenched her fists at the very thought of it. Now her Queen was forced to sit, immobile, in her throne, as she had done for millennia. A travesty it was, indeed.

Queen Annalise, the Undying Queen, was master of Cainhurst and its almighty armies by the will of the eldritch gods. However, she was now an entombed body saturated with power from the curse that permeated her whole being - as well as everything in Cainhurst. She is the Undying Queen for whom her valiant knights sacrifice the souls of the strongest Hunters in the waking world, blood-drunk or not, so that she may never truly die.

Yet even in her deathless state, the Queen keeps her eternal vigil. Greatest among her soldiers are the Custodian, ever-vigilant sentinels that guard the inner sanctum of Cainhurst.

Their comrades in arms are legion: the Queen's Guard, a seemingly endless army of automaton soldiers with top-of-the-line weaponry any equipment, ready at a moment's notice to subjugate the entire waking world, and if necessary cleanse it of all sentient life, for their Queen.

Nidhogg flight units took mastery of the air, ready to purge land, sea and sky with blessed 30mm auto-cannon, homing missile and pulse laser. Their pilots, fully equipped soldiers in their own right, were fully able and willing to commit even the most heinous acts imaginable for their Undying Queen.

And of course, there were her Knights. Loyal, valiant Knights, each one worth a thousand men in their own right. They swore to be her finest warriors, those that would give themselves to her. They were her Knights, and they shall know no fear. The Bloody Crow was one of them, and Carmine was training to join their ranks.

There was another, a man whom even her father only mentioned with a tone of barely grudging respect. Her father addressed the man's memory as Ahab, but the archives only referred to him as the Captain. As of the moment there were only the two of them, mentor and mentee, father and daughter, but that was irrelevant.

She grimaced, gripping her sword's handle with her right hand and pulling it out from the sheath before resting it on her shoulder while simultaneously activating her energy shield with her left.

The Custodians were designed to strike fear in Vilebloods as well as their enemies, in case one of her Knights somehow turned against their Queen. The very concept of it was unthinkable, but yes, in less desperate times, a Knight was willing to commit the ultimate sin just for his own personal gain. However, Carmine knew that there was nothing for her to fear from the Custodians. She was a loyal Knight-in-training, and even the thought of committing heresy, of raising her sword against her Queen... it disgusted her, frankly.

Not as to say she had no reason to fear from _this_ Custodian. This was her final test, and if she failed she had no doubts that the massive guardian would end her unworthy life in an instant.

As evidenced by the massive automaton taking a bull rush towards her. She rolled to the side, just dodging the sword that had been thrust forward to stab her. Getting up, she hacked into her opponent's side, sending out a gout of oil from its damaged hydraulics. It spun around to swing its massive sword at her, but by then she had already backed off.

"GEMINI, open fire," she commanded,

"[AFFIRMATION] Affirmative," the boxy chassis of GEMINI shifted, opening up and exposing the unmistakable profile of its automatic shotgun from his core. The automatic shotgun fired its staccato melody and a steady rhythm of twelve-gauge steel sabot slugs slammed into the Custodian's helmet. A few managed to hit its left eye, blinding it on that side since that eye now was nothing but pulverised electronics, before it raised its kite shield to defend itself.

In response she pulled the sheath of her zweihander off of her back, before transforming it into a long gun that had evidently been shortened by modification. She slotted a sixty-round drum magazine into a slot on the top, raising it with one before pulling the trigger, and, with a tearing sound as 7.62mmR rounds tore into metal with frightening efficiency, the Custodian's entire shoulder was blown into pieces of metal shrapnel. The kite shield clattered to the ground, along with the arm that had been holding it.

Then, she plunged the Seraphim's blade into her abdomen, performing the familiar rite that would satisfy the weapon's thirst for impure blood. In fact, enough blood was given that it overflowed from the wound in a vibrant explosion of red, as a spike of hardened blood punched out of her. Immediately, she got into a running start, before swinging the blade now extended with writhing cursed flesh - the flesh was dotted with still moving eyes - into the rib cage area of the automaton. Black oil splattered onto the pristine red carpet of the throne room, as the automaton staggered back. There was now a massive tear in the robot's side. Good.

She suddenly winced as the pain from her gut made itself known yet again. The Seraphim's rite of empowerment required the blood of its wielder to engage and persist, and having your blood harden into a massive spike in your own abdomen was painful to put it lightly. Granted, the almost magically inflicted internal damage to her gut repaired itself as soon as she tore the sword free of her abdomen, but it still hurt. Ignoring the pain, she sprinted behind the machine just as it recovered its stance. She expected it to just turn back and attack her, but this time it just looked around, appearing to have lost her entirely.

Oh, right. She had blinded it in one eye, after all. Carmine looked at the back of the giant's knees, and realised with a start that the chainmail normally protecting the chink in the armour was missing. Instead, what greeted her was the sight of unprotected components and hydraulics. Without missing a beat, she ran at one of the giant's weak spots, while commanding GEMINI to shred the other with his shotgun.

"[AFFIRMATION] With pleasure."

As her blade hacked into the chink in the golem's armour, and its other leg exploded in a ball of fire courtesy of GEMINI, she finally felt that she was worthy to carry on the legacy of her noble house.

She was finally a Knight.

The Custodian collapsed to its knees, its legs cut out from beneath it, but not before taking one final swipe at Carmine's legs. This time it made contact, the sheer force of the blow shattering her legs upon impact. Luckily her armour had stopped the sword from cutting her legs off, but it was still bad enough to immobilise her.

Carmine collapsed onto the floor, too shocked to even try to regain her footing. That was unexpected. Her shattered legs burned with pain, bone fragments digging into the surrounding flesh and even breaking her skin. Her opponent pushed itself up into a kneeling position, before staring at her with its one working eye. Then, the giant's surcoat spontaneously combusted, and armour plates on its now exposed torso shifted to reveal a glowing white core. Said core slowly began to grow brighter, and Carmine could sense the air currents it was drawing to itself, sucking the dust in the air to form ominous-looking contrails.

"[WARNING] Custodian core overcharging. Behaviour corresponds to self-destruct sequence. Estimated time to detonation: twenty seconds," GEMINI supplied.

No, no, no. This was impossible, even heretical. She had failed? She had won and lost at the same time?

"[ALARM] The Custodian...if it explodes in the throne room...it might harm the Queen! Unit GEMINI to unit HYDRA, redact unit "Carmine" assessment protocol effective immediately! We have jeopardised the Queen's safety!"

The Queen was in danger? Damn this entire situation to the depths of hell. Carmine stared helplessly at both her legs and the situation before her.

"[RELIEF] You have a plan? Yes, yes, anything to protect the Queen."

Carmine felt her cursed blood, her Vileblood heritage, shift the fragments of her bones back into place. Her flesh repaired itself while her wounds sealed themselves over. Having an accelerated healing factor was good and all, but Carmine right now only wished that it could heal her legs faster.

"[RESIGNATION] This plan might mean the death of us all, and yet we still might fail. But since this is the only chance we have…"

GEMINI's shotgun retracted, replaced by an apparatus that resembled a satellite dish. The prototype energy siphon? But if he used that, he could short out his circuits and potentially burn out his motherboard. That meant weeks, if not months of delicate repairs. Assuming, of course, if the pod was even salvageable.

"[QUERY] HYDRA will jam open the core's housing, but it will be up to you to destroy it. Are you able to do this?"

"Alright. I'll try my best."

"[SALUTATION] I wish you the best, Carmine. Farewell."

Then, she heard the hum of energy, as she watched the white cloud of plasma that had covered the Custodian's core be siphoned away by GEMINI's energy siphon. His chassis began to smoke as Carmine watched the Bloody Crow, and his own pod, HYDRA, circle around the place where they had been watching next to the Queen's throne to face the glowing machine core.

She watched helplessly as her only constant companion began to emanate more and more smoke that slowly changed colour from grey to black. The pungent smell of burning circuitry waften in benignly through the breathing holes of her helmet.

She reached over to pick up her sword, noticing that the spike of coagulated blood and rotted yet living meat that had previously adorned the lengthened blade had already dissolved into the already stained carpet, before reaching for the sheath. The familiar feeling of the rifle's cursed flesh growing over her arm and fusing itself to her was lost to her, as she swiftly grabbed it and raised it at her target.

Breathe in. Count to four. Breathe out. In. One. Two. Three. Four. Bring up your weapon. Line up the target in your sights. Steady your aim. Out. Take the shot - pull the trigger, never squeeze it - and get ready for the blinding glare of the crimson arcane energy. Do not get blinded by the light, compensate for the recoil before getting ready to fire again. Do not allow your weapon to overheat, lest you incur the displeasure of the living thing inside and cause it to consume you entirely.

Much too late, to her at least, she heard the roar of HYDRA's salvo of twelve micro-missiles as they slammed into the immediate area of the overloading core, blowing off the armour plates that were supposed to protect it. Then, she raised her rifle-arm, lining up the glowing core in her sights before taking the shot.

As the arcane energy practically vaporised everything around the core, the core seemed to hover in recently created empty space for a moment before imploding and simply blinking out of existence The now empty metal husk collapsed onto the floor with a loud clang.

Carmine chanced to look upon her seemingly fallen comrade. It took her entire willpower to stop herself from frantically running over and opening the chassis to start doing damage control right there and then. GEMINI's anti-grav modules seemed to have burned out, which meant that the pod was now lying on the singed carpet.

Much too late, she felt her legs finish repairing themselves. She lifted up the visor of her helmet.

Carmine saw the black-painted form of HYDRA float over to her and offer one of her robotic arms. She grabbed it, pulling herself up. Pods were normally never under direct threat in a combat situation, oftentimes because they were better armoured and shielded than their human partners. But when they did get damaged in battle, oftentimes the damage was irreparable, in part due to the fact that each pod was unique.

HYDRA scanned her pod, running it over with a red scanner laser from her central eye, before saying "[APOLOGY] GEMINI's circuitry has been burnt out. However, his motherboard and central processing unit has been largely untouched. Suggested course of action: salvage motherboard, central processing unit and any other salvageable components. Full overhaul of pod chassis recommended," the pod's feminine voice, a direct contract to GEMINI's masculine one, rang out.

HYDRA's single red eye moved to look in her direction, as if she were evaluating Carmine's response. Knowing the pod, she probably was. She allowed the excess gas to vent out of her weapon before letting the flesh retract into the LMG- _kurz_ , transforming the firearm back into its former form as a blade receptacle before picking her sword back up and reattaching the sheath to her back. Thankfully, though, GEMINI was still alive... in a sense, albeit considering that she would have to build a whole new body for the hapless pod.

"This debacle is largely my fault, and for that I apologise," the Bloody Crow muttered. "When altering the Custodian for it to serve as your last trial of knighthood, I forgot to deactivate its self-destruct protocol."

Despite the full face helmet blocking any expression on his face from the outside world, his body language admirably managed to convey the immense agitation he felt.

Another major give-away was the fact that he had taken out his heavily engraved Mare's Leg carbine and fired it point-blank into the destroyed robot's face. punching a neat hole through it - a .44 Magnum round at point blank range tended to do that - before saying, "Nevertheless, you have passed. The rift to the waking world for you shall be prepared shortly. In a few months' time, I shall find you, and test you," the Bloody Crow said with barely restrained anger and self-loathing.

He transformed his revolver back into his katana's sheath, sheathing his sword before transforming the sheathed sword into an equally heavily engraved lever-action rifle. Then he raised the rifle at the dead Custodian's corpse, firing five more rounds into the metal body before the gun was empty.

The Bloody Crow took a deep breadth, before continuing, "If you pass, you shall be a worthy Knight. If not? Then I shall have no choice but to bring thee back to Cainhurst for further training."

The Bloody Crow snapped his fingers, and HYDRA moved forwards, already shifting into her rift-breaker module. The familiar scarlet light began to glow from the rift-breaker's barrel, before erupting out in a beam that tore open a hole in reality, a rift so to speak.

"How am I supposed to return after I leave? GEMINI is not operational, so I will not be able to access Cainhurst." She pointed out, pushing the limp body of the pod at her father. Surely he had noticed that?

"I trust that you will show enough ingenuity to repair him yourself," the Bloody Crow replied, stepping towards her before embracing her - to her surprise. "Good luck. I pray that the waking world shall be kind to thee."

She felt her father slip something into her pocket, and she suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. He let go, moving just far away enough to be able to seemingly look her in the eye since his full face helmet made ensuring eye contact impossible. "Allow me to give thou the final push to attain thy knighthood," he continued.

With that, he shoved Carmine through the portal. She stumbled, tripping over her own heels before falling onto the cold stone floor of wherever was on the opposite side of the portal.

/-/

Of course. Her father's very literal sense of humour had struck again. Of course, there was that time she had requested for something 'cooler' to do for training after a particularly boring assignment he had given her.

The next time, he had asked her to hunt down a bloodlicker and bring him its head. During a blizzard. Hunting down a bear-sized cross between a tick and an emaciated human while barely being able to see in front of her - all the while wearing uninsulated steel-ceramic composite armour - had been one of the worst experiences of her life.

She laid on the floor, struck by both her father's utterly idiotic idea of a joke and captivated by the massive clockwork...thing above her. Gears were seemingly the main theme of this place, with exposed mechanisms in both the walls and ceiling. Even the desk and chair at the end of the room had gears in them.

She got up to her feet, grasping in her pocket for whatever the Bloody Crow had placed in her pocket. It turned out to be a note and an accompanying thumb drive, which she promptly opened and started to read.

/-/

It read;

 _Dearest daughter of mine,_

 _The place you have been jettisoned to is an office belonging to a man named Willem. He is the Headmaster of a hunter workshop called Beacon Academy, but you are to refer to him as Provost until told otherwise._

 _This thumb drive is to be given to him as a sign of goodwill, and as incentive in order to convince him to allow you a place in this Academy. He does not know of Cainhurst, the Vilebloods, or our Undying Queen. Yet._

 _The code phrase is: Do you believe in fairy tales?_

 _See you within the year, and be ready._

 _P.S. do not look at the contents of the thumb driven without my permission, as they are above your security clearance. In time you shall be allowed to view the full extent of your duty, but not now. Not yet, because you still have much to learn. Learn well, and show the Waking World what it means to be a Vileblood._

 _Regards, Corvus Reinhardt._

/-/

Carmine turned to the desk at the end of the room. If she looked closely enough, she could see an unruly mess of grey-white hair slumped on the table, with a mug of what smelled like cocoa next to it. Having imbibed the blessed vile blood of her monarch had given her advantages beyond simple healing and blood manipulation, lending her enhanced senses as well. As she moved closer to the man, she could hear him snore. He seemed fast asleep.

Her hand reached up to slam down the visor of her helmet, while her other one moved to rest her sword on her shoulder. Shadows drifted into the room, cast by the moonlight from outside. Reaching over, she placed GEMINI on the desk that the man was sleeping on. As she looked at the moon, she realised that there was something off about the celestial body. What was wrong with the moon?

She stepped closer to the window, idly noting that the gears were actually the mechanism for a clock, albeit a massive one. The hands of the clock danced in front of her eyes as she stared at the moon, entranced by the sheer wrongness of the sight.

The moon was shattered, fragments still glowing with that same moonlight that bathed Cainhurst in all of its glory. What had happened, to shatter the great eye of the cosmos so badly? The allure of the shattered orb still captured her gaze in a way that the moon of Cainhurst did not. As she stared at it, it seemed to be staring back at her through its fractured lens, captivating her with its own gaze.

"I believe that it is considered rude to encroach upon one's personal space. Explain yourself," the voice of the previously sleeping man rang out. He had gotten up from his armchair, probably woken up by her close proximity, and was now peering at her. The man's gaze seemed to pierce through her, while the way the man wielded his cane in his hand suggested that he was an accomplished swordsman, as well as implying that the cane was a weapon.

It seemed to have no ranged form, however, so Carmine transformed her Seraphim's sheath into its rifle form before triggering the system in her gauntlet that would shred the major blood vessels in her wrist at will. The profaned flesh crept over her wrist, entirely swallowing her hand and effectively turning her arm into a giant gun.

"I do not desire violence but I shall not hesitate to defend myself, so tell me who sent you here and why," the man continued.

"Provost Willem." The previously unnamed man's brown eyes visibly widened when she uttered the name. "It seems that you are fully awake now, so let me ask you this. Do you believe in fairy tales?"

Willem's gaze turned steely. "Yes," he answered curtly.

"Do you know the tale of the undying Queen?" With that, the man's expression turned grim and he started to adopt a combat stance.

"At ease, man, I do not wish to harm you!" She exclaimed, trying to diffuse the situation. To that end, she lowered her rifle-arm. The eyes on the flesh covering most of her upper arm stared at her with disappointment in their... eyes, but a beam of crimson arcane energy would be a bit overkill here. "I merely convey information that thou art to find interesting. Information about my Queen."

"I already know more about the Queen of the Grimm than you can ever learn."

"What are these Grimm you speak of? Nay, I do not refer to this whore of beasts that dares to rob the title of my monarch, but I speak of the one true undying Queen, the ruler of Cainhurst and the master of the Vilebloods by the will of the gods!"

She noticed with a start that she had involuntarily started shouting at the man's face. Willem, to his credit, had not flinched at all.

"The Vilebloods, you say?"

"Yes, my own noble house in fact."

The situation most likely diffused, she let the profaned flesh shrink back into her one-handed machine gun before transforming it back into a sheath. She rested her sword, point down of course, on the floor.

"Call me Ozpin. Willem died a long, long time ago, and his name reminds me of much worse times."

Carmine placed the thumb drive onto Ozpin's desk before picking GEMINI up and cradling him in the crook of her arm, rather like how one would carry a small puppy. "I have been instructed to give you this thumb drive as a sign of goodwill. I do not know what it contains but I presume it is information about Cainhurst."

"Thank you. I shall find it most enlightening."

"I have also been requested to seek a place in your academy. I have no way to return to Cainhurst, and my father hopes that you will allow me to stay here as a sign of goodwill."

"Who is your father?"

"As he said to me once, names are for friends. But you shall know him as the Bloody Crow of Cainhurst."

"The Bloody Crow of Cainhurst?" Ozpin asked apprehensively.

"Aye. Not to distract, but where may I be able to repair my pod here?"

"You may utilise the academy workshop. Usually students repair their weapons and armour there, but you may be able to find the suitable tools and components for the job. If not, then you could purchase what you need at Vale."

"Vale?"

"The nearest city. Be warned, it is quite large, so try not to get lost."

"I will not 'get lost'. It is not befitting of a Knight."

"A Knight?"

"The title of one such as I."

"Well then, from now on you are to consider me your headmaster. Report to professor Goodwitch for allocation to a guest dorm until the new school year. After that, you shall be allocated into one of the four-person teams that shall be announced after the Initiation ceremony."

Ozpin subtly moved to look her in the eye for a second before dismissing her.

Carmine looked around the room before asking "Headmaster? There are no stairs, not even a ladder. How am I supposed to leave?"

"There is an elevator at the other end of the room. The rest is self-explanatory."

An elevator? "Sir, what if I do not know how to use an elevator?"

Ozpin started to look flustered. He started to pinch the bridge of his nose, before sighing deeply. "There are only two buttons in the elevator; they are labeled with arrows. One points up, the other points down. You'll want to press the one pointing down."

"Yes, Headmaster."

She got into the elevator, pressing the button that she had been told to press. As the doors slid closed, she started to feel that Beacon might not be so bad after all. "GEMINI? This might not be so bad after all," she muttered, uncaring whether her short-circuited friend heard her or not.

/-/

The Bloody Crow of Cainhurst? At least now he had a name, but not a face. He plugged the thumb drive into his scroll, adjusting the stand on the back so that it could stand freely. He then accessed the files, opening them to find that the information had been compiled into a database of compartmentalised data, not unlike a wiki. He clicked the group of files listed under the name of the Bloody Crow, and opened them, taking a sip of his cocoa as he did.

He promptly took a spit take. _This guy_ was the Bloody Crow?

For context's sake, it must be known that this particular man was perhaps the most dangerous man Ozpin had ever met - barring Salem, of course, but _she_ was no man.

The Crow was apparently first seen in Remnant raiding an Atlas Institute of Research Development [AIReD] convoy around twenty years ago. Survivors reported that he used some sort of portal technology to remove whatever it was that he was trying to steal, as well as the unconscious bodies of any unfortunate Atlesian Specialists assigned to escort the convoy.

Ozpin had encountered the rogue Hunter once, when he had been caught up in the turmoil of one of his signature raids. He had been in Atlas to inspect the prototype of a fully artificial Huntsman android, aura and all, when a massive explosion had shaken the entire facility. Ironwood himself had been held up evacuating the wounded due to the fact that the explosion had ruptured a tank of highly toxic gas, but Ozpin had managed to find and engage the Crow.

The Crow had neutralised him in less than twenty seconds. Turns out his crow wings, most likely his Faunus trait, could fire out volleys of feathers that acted more like crossbow bolts, rather similarly to Nevermores in fact. When he was found hours later by Ironwood himself, no less, he had been pinned to the wall courtesy of feathers pinning his clothes to said wall.

Ozpin cast a glance towards the inkwell on his table, more specifically the jet black writing quill in it. Even after more than a decade, the feather he had decided to keep was sharp enough to serve as both a letter opener and as a quill for signatures, which attested to their effectiveness as weapons when fresh.

But that was it. One personal near-death encounter, a few survivor testaments and frankly perplexing security camera footage. No substantial leads at all. No name, not even a face. The rogue Hunter had a known body count in the hundreds, which was not counting the permanent disappearances from his kidnappings, and yet his case was cold.

Which led to the case of Summer Rose. She had arrived at an agricultural settlement to defend it from a particularly devastating Grimm attack, as did many other Huntsmen and Huntresses. The defence effort was a devastating failure, with the whole town being levelled by a rampaging Goliath herd, but the most disturbing fact was that during the final assault by the Grimm, Summer had vanished without a trace.

Witness accounts reported that she had been swarmed by Grimm, and then a massive flash of light had burst out from her location, followed by an equally massive shockwave. When another fire team of Huntsmen arrived at the epicentre of the conflagration, they found that the entire vicinity of the explosion of light had been scorched. The Grimm had been vaporised, and the whole area was lifeless save for one lightly singed boy, around four years old, bawling his eyes out. No sign of the Huntress anywhere.

The disturbing thing was that the Crow had been sighted in the same region a few days later. Had he kidnapped her?

He then moved to the file on Custodians. Unusually enough, the page had a header on it, which read; Do _not_ allow Carmine to view this at all costs.

That piqued his interest. He scrolled down the page, and a small part of him could understand why. That small part was what had influenced him to birth a nascent god in his college, sacrificing everyone inside, even himself, to achieve said goal. The emergence of the Vacuous Spider to act as a bulwark between Remnant and the Great Ones had worked, for the most part. He had succeeded on that front, but failed overall. The name of the Provost was a taboo among those that knew of the old kingdom. Yharnam was dead, and he dearly hoped that it would remain so.

However, that was just a very small part. Most of him was horrified beyond belief.

A Custodian was actually some sort of flesh puppet, a Huntsman or Huntress who had their soul literally removed to keep the Vileblood Queen alive. From what the files stated it seemed that the Queen and Cainhurst's existence as a pocket dimension were intertwined irrevocably, and since she had somehow been forced into a permanent state halfway between life and death, her Knights had been forced to utilise the souls of particularly powerful Huntsmen to use as fuel.

In the spirit of pragmatism, the Vilebloods did not waste the empty vessels of flesh that remained. Custodians were a combination of an armoured walker, a massive suit of powered armour, and a cybernetic life-support system; their pilots were neurally linked straight into the Custodian's cybernetic systems, and were thus able to use the walker as if it were their own body.

Sustained and kept alive within the armour, the link between their physical being and the Custodian's systems is absolute and for the remainder of their life. The unfortunate soul trapped within the automaton will control the robotic body of the walker, albeit in a completely brainwashed state due to any prior memories being removed with their soul, and experience the outside world through a web of neural links and sensors implanted within their life support systems.

No doubt the unfortunate girl had been taught to believe they were naught but soulless machines, hence the secrecy. He could understand, but there was another, more pressing question on his mind.

Was this what Summer had become?

/-/

Corvus sat in the central chair of the castle's control centre. Here was where all the data taken in by every single machine in Cainhurst was collated, scanned thoroughly and evaluated. He smirked to himself. That fool Willem had not even bothered to check for any malicious programming in the thumb drive. With the virus embedded within, he could monitor anything Willem did on his devices, and he could access anything Willem himself could access. He started to track the Headmaster's viewing history, noting with interest that he had accessed his very own file first. The man certainly remembered their first - and very abruptly last - meeting.

The pattern became marginally more concerning when he realised that Willem was reading up on the Custodians. Well, there was nothing of tactical value to be learned in those files, he had made sure of that himself.

Suddenly, a notification appeared on one of the massive monitors that plastered the walls of the control room. He prodded the smaller screen that was attached to the chair to magnify it there. It appeared to be a message from Willem - he called himself Ozpin nowadays, though the Crow knew better - to one Qrow Branwen. Disregarding the blatant plagiarism in the recipient's name, he suddenly found himself carefully reading the message.

It read: Summer may have been turned to one of these...things. Make of this what you will. Do not let Tai-yang or his daughters find out _anything_ about this. [FILE]

This man certainly knew discretion, that was undeniable, but Summer? Who was that? His fingers flew as he accessed Willem's files, bringing into view the face of one Summer Rose. A lover of this false Qrow? Nay, only a teammate. He peered intensely at the woman's face. He had remembered the faces of everyone he had kidnapped with an eidetic memory that none could hope to match, but this woman's face rung no bells.

She had not, in fact, joined the ranks of the honoured Custodians.

Daughters? He switched to look at the student roster for the upcoming freshman cohort, and a few minutes of searching yielded the files of one Ruby Rose and her adoptive sister, Yang Xiao Long. Not that he had anything against adoptive children of course, Carmine herself had been adopted by him as his daughter after she had emerged from the incubation tank where she had been created. The Queen had wished for a Child of Blood, and he had delivered.

What struck him was that Willem had added a note to Ruby's file. Silver eyes? How were they special? The Vilebloods had red eyes as one of their defining traits, which effectively ruled them out from this specific selection, but it stull raised his suspicions. He decided to ponder that later.

He was idly scrolling through the student list when one particular name impacted his retinas like a malfunctioning Nidhogg flight unit slamming into one of the more prominent towers of the castle.

Jaune Arc.

Alfred's last words before the Crow has killed him came unheeded to the forefront of his mind.

"Master, look! I've done it, I've done it!" A voice rang out in his head. It was a voice filled with religious fanaticism and fervour, but it was also a voice long dead from Ahab's gun-rapier piercing the man through the throat. Nevertheless, it was a maddening voice. "I, Alfred Arc, smashed and pounded and grounded this rotten siren into fleshy pink pulp! Now you can be canonised as a true martyr, Master! I've done it, I have!"

Alfred Arc. Jaune Arc. He mulled the names over in his head. The little brat looked just like the heathen that had left his Queen dependent on the technological marvel that was her throne. It was his duty to keep her alive with the souls of the strongest Hunter, but that did not mean that he was forbidden from feeling bitter about it.

This would be another trial for Carmine, he decided. If the house of Arc had forgotten its roots, then it was all for the best. If the Arc scion decided to leave his past behind and make amends with his daughter, then he had nothing but praise. But if the brat dared to harm his daughter in any way…

He was not called the Bloody Crow of Cainhurst for nothing.

 **(Author's Notes: Well, looks like we're getting into the eldritch mystery meat of Bloodborne! I hope that this little foray will be to your liking.)**

 **(... And the Bloody Crow gets some upgrades as well via retcon; .44 Magnum is certainly a very powerful round, so it hits hard - just like his canonical repeating pistol. His gun is a Marlin Model 1894, chambered in .44 Magnum - full-sized when the sword within is sheathed and a one-handed 'Mare's Leg' carbine when the sword is unsheathed - and with that special Vileblood modification which is engravings. No tactical use whatsoever, according to Revolver Ocelot at least, but damn do they look cool.)**


	5. Informational Chapter

_Introductory_ _pamphlet on the proper use of laser weapons and industrial mining lasers._

Laser weapons are deceptively easy to produce and maintain, assuring that they would have been amongst the most common weapons in Remnant if not for government bureaucracy, an unwillingness to change due to logistical reasons, and the lobbying of major Dust suppliers. However, enough examples have been brought into the field - such as the newly commissioned standard-issue laser rifles now to be used by Atlesian forces, including the Knight series of androids - to warrant specialised training for their use and to treat injuries caused by them. SDC Dust mines, hypocritically enough, have been using mining lasers to mine Dust for almost a decade by now... which should have made workplaces for the miners (particularly Faunus ones, they always seem the most unfortunate statistically) safer. However, they are still widespread enough for accidents to occur because wherever Dust can be found, there will be people. Wherever there are people, there will be those idiotic enough to be careless with mining lasers. This pamphlet is meant to minimise such imbecilic activity.

Please note that this pamphlet is merely for informational purposes. It is neither a training manual, nor is it an adequate substitute for formalised training.

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 _What are laser weapons, and what can they do?_

Laser weapons do not fire a projectile or slug, but instead project a brief, high-energy pulse. This beam can range greatly in strength, depending on the size of the las-weapon and the rating of its power source. The largest of today's laser weapons – such as the lance-strike last resort weapon employed upon the flagships of the Atlesian Navy, rather aptly termed laser lances – produce beams that can sear away entire settlements in less than a second, leaving only lifeless, smoking craters hundreds of feet deep. On average, however, laser weapons are much smaller, ranging from ones as large as contemporary anti-tank guns to ones equal in size to conventional firearms.

Laser lances work, on a grander scale, by delivering so much infrared radiation that it essentially catalyses a fusion reaction at the point of impact. The initial energy of the beam penetrates the surface layer of the target area before superheating whatever is underneath, reducing the immediate area around the impact site to plasma as well as providing enough thermal energy to induce the ambient hydrogen to become isotopes of themselves that immediately fuse with each other to release large quantities of energy. The resulting explosion when the fusion reaction reaches critical mass is usually in the magnitude of hundreds of kilotons, serving rather adequately as a weapon of mass destruction.

Laser weapons first came about in the later half of the Great War, with a collaborative effort by scientists hailing from Vale and Vacuo producing the first few laser weapons ever used in war. The Olympus Project led to what we know as laser lances, but on a much larger and much more uncontrolled scale. This prototype weapon, the only operational system being named 'Zeus' after the lightning bolt of the eponymous pagan god, was installed into an immense prototype spacecraft - the Arkbird - to serve as a weapons platform.

As should be common knowledge, this previously untested weapon was used only once, in a surprise aerial raid by the Valean Air Force on the city of Mantle by the Arkbird. The result was a crater hundreds of metres deep gouged out of the downtown area of the old city of Mantle. The nuclear fallout from the gamma radiation produced as a byproduct of the laser caused the entire city to be abandoned, and the floating city of Atlas to be built in its place. At least, that was the idea.

It turned out that only those of a certain socio-economic status (the upper and middle classes) were allowed to relocate to Atlas, leaving Mantle's poor as well as its considerable Faunus population in the lurch. The attack killed more than half a million people in less than a few hours, and finally persuaded the now defunct kingdom of Mantle, as well as its ally, Mistral, to sue for peace. Thus ended the Great War.

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 _How do I handle a laser weapon safely, without posing a risk to myself or others?_

Even a humble laser rifle, despite its small size, if within close range and with no atmospheric diffusion of shot, has the power to blast away a foe's face on contact (applicable to both humans and Faunus, as well as the smaller varieties of Grimm), with the beam penetrating the skull and burning a hole through the brain, causing immediate death. The size of laser weapons rarely, if ever, serves as an adequate comparison between a conventional firearm and a similarly sized laser weapon.

The fact that laser pulses are energy-based means that they have much less recoil than comparatively sized Dust-based weapons, allowing the former to have much better accuracy at the cost of the versatility afforded to the latter by the numerous varieties of Dust in existence.

A laser pulse will shear through flesh producing a cauterised hole surrounded by blister-burns. When first striking flesh, a laser pulse will cause a flash-burn effect upon impact, as the heat of the discharge causes the immediate surface area of the target to be vaporised. This can, to the untrained eye, take on the same wound aspects as those produced by high density explosives, but there are major differences when it comes to field dressing laser wounds.

While the brief exploding flash of initial contact is highly visible, it is rarely the major concern of aid givers. It is typically the continuing projection of the laser beam boring into the body that causes the most extensive damage – the beam will puncture through any internal organs and is capable of severing limbs.

However, one weakness laser weapons have compared to conventional firearms is their inability in an infantry weapon format to pierce barriers or body armour made of materials that easily diffuse heat. Ceramic plates, which are ubiquitous in military-grade body armour and bulletproof vests, have proven to be resistant to laser weapons by simply diffusing the infrared radiation that provides the main portion of the damage dealt by lasers.

Lasers, being light-based, also lack mass - hardly a concern against humanoid or similarly-sized targets, but that lack of weight behind their shots means that they have suboptimal stopping power against things like larger Grimm or armoured vehicles if essential components such as vital organs for the former or ammunition for the latter are not hit... at least, until enough energy is pumped into said laser that it can bypass such resistance via brute force.

Furthermore, the composite armour of most armoured vehicles - along with improvised bone examples found on many creatures of Grimm - shares that very same property of resisting lasers so well that only scorch marks remain as evidence of their usage. Again, simply increasing the output of the laser could help counteract this, but a weapon powerful enough to utilise that phenomena would inevitably be one requiring an entire heavy weapons team to transport and utilise - for example, an anti-tank gun.

However, the main way that laser weapons stand out from their kinetic contemporaries is against Huntsmen. Huntsmen, being focused on mobility and dodging as they are, can hardly dodge something travelling at the speed of light. However, not enough field experience or data on the subject of lasers as an anti-Huntsman weapon has been gathered to provide a basis for a conclusive statement... but they could potentially be useful with further development.

While larger weapons like laser lances can ignore the diffusing effect of heat-conducting material by the virtue of their sheer power, the amount of power needed for infantry-sized laser weapons to be able to pierce armour necessitates either a man-portable battery pack or an attached generator - both of which are all but impractical for manned usage. As such, they are often restricted to fully autonomous units such as Atlesian Knights which can carry the required components required for a decently powerful laser weapon. Conventional firearms however require only ammunition and an associated firing mechanism, meaning that they remain the standard armament of manned infantry and armoured vehicles.

Another reason why conventional firearms still see use by the majority of our armed forces is that lasers, being light-based, do not cope well when presented with low-visibility conditions. Fog and clouds in particular have been shown to noticeably impair the destructive potential of most lasers, and it has proven impossible to utilise laser weaponry in conjunction with smoke munitions or in an excessively dust or smoke-filled atmosphere. As such, conventional firearms present superior versatility in that they can be used regardless of weather or atmospheric conditions.

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 _How do I conduct first aid on someone injured by a laser weapon?_

When treating, the following steps should be employed when confronted with a laser-inflicted wound:

I) Approach. Do not treat until you have ensured the victim is removed from the source. Laser weapons produce a narrow amplified beam of light. Most often this is a short burst, however, should the shaft be ongoing and still present, it is dangerous to approach – entering the beam will cause you to become a casualty as well.

II) Expose. Identify the impact site and determine the extent of the flash burn. Lift away any clothing covering the burnt area, without pulling material over the burns. Leave in place any material that has been seared into the burn area. If the victim is wearing armour, be aware that some materials absorb heat, leaving the area dangerous to touch. In a hazardous environment (such as chemically hazardous zones, radioactive sites, or other such dangerous areas) do not cut away any protective covering – apply the dressing directly over it.

III) Evaluate. Find the penetration level of the beam. Has the beam passed through the victim causing an exit wound? It is best to check as soon as possible. The extreme heat cauterizes the wound, leaving minimum bleeding, however, rapid swelling will begin around the area almost immediately, making later diagnosis more difficult. If the laser-inflicted wound is only a glancing hit, in a limb, or shows no signs of striking a vital organ, proceed with Field Dressing Type I. If you suspect the laser wound has penetrated a vital organ, go straight to Type II.

IV) Field Dressing (Type I). Using the cleanest material available, place the cloth lightly over the burn, covering the entirety of the wound. If the victim is able, he may hold the dressing in place. Use strips to bind in place (wrapping around limbs or torso) and tie tightly enough to avoid slipping. Do not break blisters or apply ointments to flash burns.

V) Field Dressing (Type II). Cover the wound as quickly and completely as possible. This is cosmetic, to hide the lethal wound from comrades, and may also allow the victim some false comfort. The swelling that follows is bound to cause catastrophic bodily failures.

If it has been deemed appropriate, usually with the consent of the injured party - barring when they have already fallen unconscious - a mercy killing may be administered. For the particularly zealous, please note that this is not an excuse for extrajudicial summary execution of wounded prisoners.

As it has been demonstrated, laser weapons can be truly deadly instruments in battle, but only if they are used properly and with the necessary caution.

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 _What about mining lasers?_

Whereas laser weapons damage through the energy they transmit, the danger of mining lasers lies in their ability to cut. Mining lasers, being designed to cut through bedrock to reach Dust veins, will make short work of anyone unfortunate - or idiotic - enough to be caught in its beam. Mining lasers are actually a byproduct of laser lance development, their cutting properties being a more refined, more controlled and more downsized version of the overwhelmingly destructive beam emitted by a laser lance weapons system or the ones used by the Arkbird.

The first-aid procedures for mining laser injuries is practically similar to those required for laser weapon injuries, the only difference being that while laser weapons can deal glancing hits without being fatal, mining lasers cut through whatever they hit. This means that if the laser hits a limb, the limb has been amputated, and the wound cauterised. There is no hope of reattachment, and even prosthetic limbs, without the vital nerve endings to control the limb with, may not be viable. If the laser hits the torso or the head, the victim would invariably be either bisected or beheaded in some manner. This is usually fatal, either from the damage itself or the resulting shock. In short, there is no such thing as a glancing hit with a mining laser.

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 _Afterword_

It is our hope that whatever is in this pamphlet will be internalised, or at least adhered to. Although lasers may seem harmless at first glance, seeming to be only beams of visible light, they are actually a force to be given the utmost respect. The safety and first-aid advice given is the result of decades of laboratory testing, battlefield experience and those that have lost their lives to such energies, either in war, in tragic accidents or by pure stupidity. The former two are to be respected for their sacrifice; the latter serve as examples of what happens when the sheer power of laser technology is disrespected.

It should be safe to say that you have been warned.

The makers of this pamphlet are not responsible for any death, injury or loss sustained due to the usage or misuse of lasers.

 _Co-written by Dr. Polendina (PhD, Head of Experimental Robotics and AI Department) and Dr. Merlot (PhD, Head of Bioengineering Department)._

 _Medical research and testimonies provided by Dr. Rouge (Medical Doctorate, Director of Beacon Academy Hospital and Valean board member of Médecins Sans Frontiéres [Doctors Without Borders].)_

 _Produced, copyrighted and distributed exclusively by the Atlas Institute of Research and Development (AIReD)._

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 **Cainhurst robotic infantry unit list:**

- **Line Infantry Unit** : (Actual design: 1960s Nazi Soldier from Wolfenstein: The New Order. They are equipped with a 5.45mm AK-74M assault rifle with a folding foregrip and an inbuilt retractable socket bayonet, and the rifle itself has a magazine capacity of 30 rounds. They also have a not insignificant amount of armour, with an integrated Stahlhelm and a separate armour plate as a face-mask with two eyeholes and a vestigial hole where the nose would be, and a cuirass protecting the entire torso as well as plates protecting the upper arms. They have a secondary armament in regards to the metal baton they have, but that is restricted mostly to police action only.)

{—}

(Designated units, identifiable by the yellow stripe of fabric sown onto the left upper arm of their suits, are grenadiers. They forego the folding foregrip and built-in socket bayonet on their assault rifles in favour of an underslung GP-25 grenade launcher, which can fire 40mm caseless grenades of various varieties - fragmentation, smoke, CS gas or non-lethal baton grenades.)

- **Commando** **Unit** : (Actual design: Deathshead's Commandoes from Wolfenstein: The New Order. They are equipped with an OTs-14A 'Groza' assault rifle - a bullpup firearm, chambered for the hard-hitting and subsonic but limited-ranged 9x39mm cartridge, and with a built-in GP-25 grenade launcher - as well as either a multi-purpose derivative of the 9K38 Igla MANPAD, or a Dragunov SVU bullpup DMR. They are more lightly armoured to allow for greater speed, stealth and manoeuvrability. They also have more advanced on-board AIs, which essentially translates into better training. This - as well as their secondary shoulder-fired missiles or sniper rifles - makes them excellent for the commando work which they have been designed to do.)

- **Shock/ Assault Unit** : (Actual design: Fire Trooper from Wolfenstein: The New Order. They are equipped with an automatic double-barrelled shotgun with a capacity of 40 rounds from two magazines installed next to each other, with the magazine further back from the barrel containing 20 shells of conventional buckshot and the other magazine closer to the barrel containing 20 shells of specially designed 'shrapnel' shot which utilises ricocheting projectiles meant to bounce off solid surfaces like walls, as well as an arm-mounted full-size flamethrower built into their left forearm. They also don an evnironmentally-enclosed padded suit - essentially a heavily armoured hazmat suit - with an inbuilt cooling and chemical neutralisation system, with the tanks of coolant and neutraliser, as well as the fuel for their flamethrowers, being mounted on the backs of the suits. They are used primarily to assault secure positions like forts or strongholds, as well as for urban warfare, where their close-range firepower and impact on morale due to their flamethrowers can come into their own.)

- **Fire Support/ Heavy Weapons Unit** : (Actual design: Rocket Trooper from Wolfenstein: The New Order. They are equipped with a heavy laser cannon connected to a back-mounted generator on the back that is integrated into the unit's armour plating, but is unable to sustain a beam like a true TLS, instead firing off individual beams rather like a normal laser weapon. In essence, it trades the ability to create a sustained damaging beam for the capability to fire off single heavily damaging shots at a time... shots that can easily pierce armour, unlike an aircraft-mounted TLS. They suffer from a lack of mobility due to their heavy weapon, which results in them having extremely heavy armour to compensate - so much so that they are basically immune to small-arms fire barring anti-vehicluar munitions like ATGMs or anti-tank guns. If the laser cannon is damaged or runs out of power, the Fire Support Unit can utilise its sidearm of a Stechkin automatic pistol, chambered in 9x19mm Makarov - it fires in full auto instead of operating semi-automatically like a normal pistol, and utilises a twenty round magazine - to defend itself and potentially complete its mission before it can return to base.)

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 **Cainhurst Vehicle list:**

- **Cainhurst**

{ _Cainhurst, due to its reliance on pre-programmed autonomous and robotic units, tends to embrace the design philosophy of quantity over quality. While years of technological theft and a lack of bureaucracy to obstruct projects has left their military at a numerical equal footing and somehow a technological advantage when compared with their competitors in Remnant, they have not had the experience of actual war before now. They tend towards the ideology of mechanised warfare that either revolves around their super-heavy and elite units or utilises sheer firepower to get the job done._ }

- **Galahad-class Main Battle Tank** : (IRL design: A drone version of the Russian T-72B MBT. The main battle tank of Cainhurst, it has been developed to provide maximum effectiveness per unit cost, as well as to be suitably efficient in terms of mass production. A decent mobility of 60kph at top speed as well as a relatively light weight of about 44.5 tons gives it excellent operational versatility, while protection granted by reasonably heavy armour concentrated on the upper glacis and the turret along with liberal usage of ERA allows it to take hits that would otherwise kill it. A 125mm smoothbore cannon allows it to fire the usual APFSDS and HEAT-FS shells as well as more esoteric options such as HE-Frag-FS shells and barrel-fired ATGMs, but an autoloader installed along the turret ring means that any successful penetrative hits to the side risks detonating the ammunition there and killing the tank entirely. Furthermore, it has a truly atrocious reverse speed of 3kph, meaning that it is physically unable to retreat. However, its mix of firepower, mobility and protection makes it a worthy contender to its Remnant-made contemporaries.)

- **Lancelot-class Super-Heavy Tank** [Infantry Support variant] : (Actual design: A drone version of the Baneblade Super-Heavy Tank from 40k, but with the main gun being relegated to a 152mm smoothbore gun, unlike the rifled howitzers mounted in the Guinevere SPHs, that can fire either APFSDS, HEAT-FS or HE-Frag-FS shells... rather like the smaller guns of the Galahads. The sponsons on the sides of the hull and the hull gun emplacement, instead of their canonical heavy bolters, bear twin-linked versions of the laser cannons carried by Fire Support infantry units - otherwise known as lascannons. The lascannon turrets on top of the sponsons have been converted to Lucan SPAA turrets, its hull-mounted Demolisher Cannon has now been replaced by a 120mm mortar, and a pintle mount on top of the turret holds a remote installation for a single 14.5mm heavy machine gun. The Lancelot and its sister unit the Arthur are the two super-heavy units of Cainhurst, able to take the role of unstoppable juggernauts on offence and that of immovable bastions on defence. The Lancelot, however, is more suited for defence due to having weapons better suited to engaging lighter but more numerous foes.)

- **Arthur-class Super-Heavy Tank** [Tank Destroyer variant] : (Actual design: A drone version of the Shadowsword Super-Heavy Tank from 40k, which in and of itself is a derivative of the Baneblade. The changes to the core vehicle are about the same, save for the fact that the hull-mounted mortar and the turret itself has been removed in favour of a fixed superstructure designed to hold frankly the most powerful laser weapon to ever see mass production. The Excalibur cannon, rather like the Volcano cannon of its 40k equivalent, is basically an oversized laser cannon meant to basically kill anything it is pointed at. Otherwise, all secondary armaments carry over. This is an offensively oriented version of the Lancelot, with a massive cannon meant to pierce through enemy super-heavy units and fortifications with impunity, while the secondary armaments ensure that the vehicle itself is exceedingly well defended.)

- **Guinevere-class Self-Propelled Howitzer** : (IRL design: A drone version of the 2S3 Akatsiya SPH. It is armed with a 152mm howitzer that, among more normal options such as 'dumb' HE-Frag rounds for indirect fire at targets up to 18.5km away and HEAT-FS rounds for the occasional situations necessitating direct fire, can fire _Krasnopol_ shells, which are essentially laser-guided HE-Frag shells that are capable of hitting even _moving_ targets travelling at up to 36kph - at distances up to 20km away, no less.)

- **Gwain-class Surface-to-Air Missile system** : (IRL design: A drone version of the Russian S-300PMU-2 SAM system. It acts well against high-altitude threats like bombers and cautious fighters that the Lucan SPAAG cannot reach with its own 23mm auto-cannons and missiles.)

- **Lucan-class SPAA vehicle** : (IRL design: A drone version of the Russian 2K22 Tunguska SPAAG. Its dual twin-linked 30mm auto-cannons makes short work of ground troops, armoured targets and aircraft at low altitude, while eight proximity-fused semi-active homing missiles can engage fighters and VTOL aircraft that choose to remain at higher altitudes.)

- **Gareth-class IFV** : (IRL design: A drone version of the Russian BMP-2D Infantry Fighting Vehicle. It and the Galahad are the bread and butter of Cainhurst's combined arms strategies, bringing in soldiers after the initial devastation dealt by the MBTs in order to take advantage of the resulting chaos. Carrying up to eight soldiers, one more than its IRL counterpart by virtue of there being no need for vehicle crew, it serves as basically an armoured eight-wheeled bus with a single 30mm auto-cannon, an ATGM tube on top of the turret, and a single coaxial 7.62mm machine gun.)

- **Nidhogg** **Flight Unit** : (Actual design: cross between the Russian Su-37 Terminator fighter and the flight unit from Nier Automata. It is the premier fighter of Cainhurst, incorporating advanced features like thrust-vectoring engines and canards for vastly increased manoeuvrability. The aircraft is carrier-capable, being built with CATOBAR capability in mind, though is equally capable of taking off from standard airfields. It possesses a TLS [Tactical Laser System] mounted on a centreline hardpoint as well as the ability to concurrently use standard missiles and either 4AAMs [4-Target Air-to-air missiles] or HPAAs [High-Power Air-to-air missiles] mounted on wing hardpoints. However, the lack of a dedicated focusing array means that the TLS is rather inefficient in terms of energy - meaning that it struggles somewhat with heavily armoured targets, and that things like clouds or fog can harmlessly disperse the sustained laser beam.)

- **Ratatoskr Autonomous Fighter** : (IRL design: A drone version of the Russian MiG-29 Fulcrum but equipped with CATOBAR capability. It is the main fighter aircraft of Cainhurst due to it being carrier-capable like the Nidhogg, as well as being extremely capable in its own regard., LAGMs [Long Range Air-to-Ground missiles] can be used for ground attack while air-to-air capability is ensured via HPAAs [High-Power Air-to-air missiles] or 4AAMs [4-Target Air-to-air missiles].)

- **Jormungandr Heavy Bomber** : (IRL design: A drone version of the Russian Tu-160 strategic heavy bomber. It is designed to utilise cruise missiles to hit targets from long range, and these cruise missiles can mount a variety of warheads - conventional munitions and nuclear warheads being among them. A jammer variant also exists, and it is able to blanket a large radius around it from enemy radar. They tend to be used only with a Ratatoskr escort _at minimum_ as their large size, despite their capability to fly at speeds of about Mach 2, means that they are vulnerable to enemy fighters and anti-air weapons.)

- **Alicorn Submersible Aviation Cruiser (SAC)** (Actual design: the Alicorn from Ace Combat 7. The Alicorn, as well as being able to function like a typical nuclear submarine in that it can launch SLBMs and other types of cruise missiles, is also able to launch CATOBAR-capable aircraft like Ratatoskrs or Wraiths like an aircraft carrier along with submarine-launcher UCAVs [SLUAVs]. As well as possessing CIWS and SAMs that can be deployed from internal hatches, it also possesses, along with two smaller multi-purpose railguns that can fire at a rate of up to 80 rounds per minute, a much larger railgun hidden underneath the flight deck. )

{—}

(This larger railgun has an effective range of over 3000km, and a maximum range of around 5000km, and the railgun's projectiles can change their flight paths using terminal guidance provided by a SLUAV. However, should the SLUAV be destroyed, a fail-safe forces the projectiles to immediately self-destruct. It can even load specialized nuclear shells - 1 kiloton-yield projectiles which are capable of killing anyone within a 400m radius around the impact site instantaneously, as well as air burst thermobaric munitions. It also has 48 VLS [Vertical Launch System] missile launchers placed within both hulls of the trimaran design, which can support various short-ran and long-range missiles - including SLBMs with 200kt nuclear warheads. Amidst all the hardware, it also possesses rather comfortable cabins meant for high-level officers and esteemed guests, as well as space for around 600 crew members and almost twice that number of non-crew personnel.)

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 **Remnant Fan-Made Vehicle list:**

- **Atlas**

{ _Atlas, despite technically losing the Great War, actually has the largest armed force in Remnant. Unsurprising, considering that said armed force has been responsible for the majority of combating the Creatures of Grimm for the entirety of recent history. They tend to be rather picky when it comes to hardware options, opting for balanced and affordable yet exceedingly effective units that can hold their own in most foreseeable scenarios. Atlas's military doctrine is very direct in nature, usually warranting combined arms warfare and frequently using blitzkrieg tactics to break down enemy cohesion and divide them for easy dispatching - which has proven to be extremely effective against hordes of Grimm in particular._ }

-(Atlas) **Turmfalke Fighter** : (IRL design: British Panavia Tornado GR.4, which also happened to see use by the IRL German Luftwaffe, but with CATOBAR capability. It is an older airframe, and is more suited for fighter-bomber duties rather than actual dogfighting, though it can pull its weight in the latter regard very well indeed. It can be equipped with standard missiles as well as either BDSPs [Bomblet Dispensers] which dispenses submunition bomblets over a large area similar to a cluster bomb, or LASMs [Long-Range Air-to-Ship missiles] which have a relatively small blast radius but deal immense damage to their targets. However, their main pièce de résistance is the built-in ECMP [Electronic Countermeasure Pod] which jams enemy lock-on capabilities and missile homing within range.)

-(Atlas) **Adler Fighter** : (IRL design: German Eurofighter Typhoon, but with CATOBAR capability. The premier fighter of Atlas's air force. Air-to-air capability is ensured by standard missiles, and LAAMs [Long-Range Air-to-air missiles] or HCAAs [High Capacity Air-to-air missiles] with the first being mainly for long-range BVR attacks and interception and the second being meant for WVR dogfighting. It can also utilise 8AGM [8-Target Air-to-Ground missiles] to engage up to eight ground targets at a time, allowing for precision strikes.)

-(Atlas) **Vogel Autonomous Fighter** : (Actual design: Vogel UCAV from Ace Combat 5, with a single cannon and an internal weapons bay containing missiles for general purpose usage. They can either be carried by the Arkbird or launched from launchers that can either be mounted on trucks or installed on aerial battleships. They are comparatively more fragile than Adlers or Turmfalkes, and they require a connection to either the Arkbird or to a command centre on the ground or on an aerial battleship, and they are unable to utilise any specialised air-to-ground weaponry, meaning that even with their superhuman maneuverability, they cannot replace conventional fighter/strike aircraft.)

-(Atlas) **Conqueror IFV** : (IRL design: German Marder 1A3 IFV. A lightly armoured troop transport that can carry up to six people as well as being equipped with decent firepower via its 20mm auto-cannon, 7.62mm coaxial machine gun and secondary ATGMs, it is used by the Atlesian military as well as being sold for export due to the ubiquitousness of the vehicle.)

-(Atlas) **Challenger MBT** : (IRL design: German Leopard 2A4 MBT. The Challenger's above-average mobility allows it to move through the harshest terrain with ease, while the main 120mm smoothbore gun can fire HEAT-FS rounds meant to take down enemy tanks with shaped charge warheads, canister rounds for use against enemy personnel and Grimm, or APFSDS rounds that punch through armour like butter. Cheaper than its Valean contemporary and lacking the software that lends the Guardian its technical superiority, it is nonetheless just as capable from a mechanical standpoint.)

- **Vale**

{ _Vale, being as reliant on Huntsmen as it is, does not have as large a military as Atlas. What it does have, however, is an elite military. Each combat personnel receives a level of training equivalent to that reserved for the best of Atlas, as well as receiving the absolute best hardware in existence - having a small military means that one can afford to outfit it with the finest equipment out there - but they are also expected to show the utmost loyalty for their country. Most significantly talented military personnel such as ace squadrons and black ops squads are Valean in origin, which makes sense considering their military's emphasis on swift precision strikes. Vale's military makes heavy use of interception, standoff attacks and hit-and-run tactics, seeking to destroy the enemy before the enemy can engage them and thereby rarely meeting their enemies in direct battle, as a direct result of the military primarily being deployed against hostile human forces due to Huntsmen handling any threats of Grimm origin._ }

-(Vale) **Phantom Fighter** : (IRL design: French Dassault Mirage 2000-5, but with CATOBAR capability. An older aircraft similar to Atlas's Turmfalke, but it bears the dubious advantage of being a fighter by design instead of being a fighter-bomber airframe like the Turmfalke. Ground attack is dealt with by GBPs [Guided Penetration Bombs] or in other words laser-guided bombs, while air-to-air capability is ensured via 4AAMs [4-Target Air-to-air missiles] and LAAMs [Long-Range Air-to-air missiles].)

-(Vale) **Wraith Fighter** : (IRL design: French Dassault Rafale M. The premier fighter of Vale's air force. It can either utilise HCAAs [High-Capacity Air-to-air missiles] or LAAMs [Long-Range Air-to-air missiles] with the latter being used for close-range dogfighting against more agile opponents and the former being meant for beyond-visual range aerial engagements. Furthermore, it can also utilise LACMs [Land Attack Cruise Missiles] which are basically cruise missiles which are able to level large clusters of ground targets even when launched from long range.)

-(Vale) **Archer IFV** : (IRL design: French AMX-10 PAC-90 fire support vehicle. It is used only by Vale's military, and therefore no third party should possess any operational units. It is a troop transport that is able to hold its own in a firefight thanks to extremely heavy armament for an IFV comprising of a 90mm main gun, a 7.62mm coaxial machine gun and space for four infantrymen - less than the six that its Atlesian contemporary can hold, but this infantry attaché could potentially be a team of Huntsmen from Beacon due to preexisting diplomatic ties. This vehicle is not for sale to third parties, and thus cannot be exported.)

-(Vale) **Guardian MBT** : (IRL design: French Leclerc MBT. The main armoured vehicle of Vale, it is used by the military and police but only in cases where actual tanks are needed such as Grimm incursions or armed insurrections. It is very well armoured as well as being incredibly mobile and well-armed - with a 120mm smoothbore cannon roughly equal to the one used in Atlas's Challenger - but one problem is that this tank is very, _very_ expensive per unit.)

- **Coalition(?)**

{ _Due to the events preceding [REDACTED] and the event's many severe consequences, including the world war that broke out after the fact, Vale and Atlas have seen fit to ally themselves to counter this new threat to the sovereignty of the four kingdoms. It has been determined that, while friendly ground forces seem to be evenly matched against those of the enemy, there is a marked disadvantage in terms of air power. Therefore, the main new products of this alliance are high-performance stealth fighters meant be piloted by ace squadrons to engage and destroy any conceivable enemy asset, high-priority ones in particular, before too much damage is done._ }

-(Coalition) **Albatros [Albatross] fighter** : (IRL design: IRL design: US F-35C Lightning II / Panther. It can normally use 8AGMs [8-Target Air-to-Ground Missiles] mounted on underwing pylons or SODs [Stand-Off Dispensers] stored in the main internal weapons bay, with the latter having the capability to basically drop bomblets along a guided path, as well as two conventional missiles on underwing hardpoints and a 20mm gun pod on the underside of the fuselage. If required, it can also carry FAEBs [Fuel-Air Explosive Bombs] in the internal weapons bay, which are essentially thermobaric bombs.)

-(Coalition) **Kormoran [Cormorant] fighter** : (IRL design: US YF-23 Black Widow II. It is unparalleled in air-to-air combat via its weapon choice of either HVAAs [Hyper Velocity Air-to-air missiles] or 4AAMs [4-Target Air-to-air missiles] while basic ground attack capability is at leasts by the ability to use UGBs [Unguided Bombs] due to a lack of ground-targeting avionics. Stealth capabilities equal to if not better than that of the Albatross ensure that by the time the enemy detects it, the target is basically screwed.）

 **(Author's notes: The pamphlet in the first part is the counterpart to the SDC one on Dust that Weiss seems to freely give out, and this is sort of an attempt at worldbuilding. Vale's warrior king being a one man army never sat well with me, so I changed it to this.)**


	6. Cosmic Beacon (Part 1 of 2)

"So, let me get this straight. You got up to defuse the situation breaking out between a known mob boss and some random girl you've never seen before but thought that she was a threat. In doing so, she thought you were a threat in return and then proceeded to knock you on your arse with a slug."

"Correct so far," Noctis grumbled. The drone of the airship's engines drowned out any nuances in the conversation, but he could sense Pyrrha's 'not angry, just disappointed' vibe from beside him. Don't ask how, but he simply could.

"This caused you to fly into the wall of the nightclub, and of course you slam into it, breaking both the wall and a worryingly large number of your ribs. Said broken ribs also punctured one of your lungs."

"In my defence," Noctis grouched, "I didn't notice the punctured lung until after the fight."

"Of course, in the fight afterwards, the two of you manage to nearly kill each other," Pyrrha deadpanned. "With you being dumb enough to break out the grenades. I only find out that you've been knocked out only after Junior calls to tell me that you've been hospitalised. The other girl apparently walked out with her aura flickering, meaning that one more grenade would have killed her as well. And we both know how hard your semblance can be to deal with," she said, glaring pointedly at him.

"So what? I know that that when I make eye contact with another person, the other person tends to start puking out of fear, but that doesn't make me immediately responsible," he snapped. "Besides, she shot first. She shot me even when my aura wasn't up."

"What I'm more worried about was the fact that you used your semblance in the first place. It kills you a little bit every time you do, and I mean that literally," Pyrrha muttered. "It literally tears you apart every time you use it, both in body and mind, but you still used it in a bar fight of all things. That's why father banned you from tournaments in the first place," she said, concern etching itself on her face.

"I know. My semblance is literal agony at the best of times, and my eyes freak everyone around me out when I use it, but I know the risks. Besides, I became your aide and bodyguard for a reason. If I can't join you, I'd better damn well keep you safe."

Pyrrha sighed. "Don't hurt yourself. I've seen how much pain you are in, and it hurts me to see that."

"I'll be alright."

"Good. Also, try not to be so confrontational. You've already made one enemy, so try not to alienate the whole school before the end of the semester?" She grinned wryly, all traces of worry replaced with good natured humour.

Noctis, sensing his opportunity to get a retaliatory barb in, quipped, "Your reputation, though? You sure that everyone won't just stand back in awe of the Invincible Girl, four time Mistrali tournament winner? Hero worship and making friends usually don't come together."

If looks could kill, Noctis would have spontaneously combusted right there and then. Luckily they couldn't, and as the airship started to descend, he pointed a finger towards the rapidly approaching Gothic architecture that loomed outside the window. "There's Beacon Academy. Get an eyeful, sis, cause that's gonna be our new home for only god knows how long."

Pyrrha leaned over to glimpse the somehow menacing building, and Noctis moved to join her.

Then, he noticed something. He was about to call out to his sister, to point out whatever it was, before it vanished again.

However, he could swear that he had seen a massive, skeletal _thing_ that somehow seemed remarkable similar to a spider. The sheer wrongness of it was startling, but not as startling as it should have been. Probably he had the insight he needed to make sense of what was before him, but not the whole picture.

But maybe not even that was enough. Even more worryingly, his corneas started to itch something fierce, and his hands moved reflexively to scratch them before he noticed that he was wearing his gloves. He stopped his hands as they twitched towards his wide eyes, realising what he was about to do. Then, it vanished again from view, seemingly before his eyes, and the itch subsided.

He could have sworn that before it vanished, it had stared at him, and _something_ had started whispering in the back of his mind. _'Amygdala.'_ It had said. Damn thing nearly made him scratch out his own eyes. What the hell was it?

His train of thought was interrupted by the sudden jolt of the airship landing at the Academy grounds. Pyrrha turned to him once more, saying "Remember what I told you. Don't start anything rash, especially with that girl you fought."

Noctis reached to the gas mask hanging from his neck, slipping it over his head once again. He then picked up his helmet from the seat beside him, strapping it on over his mask, before locking in his skull-visaged armour faceplate with a loud click to his helmet. He flexed his prosthetic arm, and checked the rapier at his side with his other one. "You know me best, sis. I'm not going to start anything, but if she does, on the other hand…"

He thought it would be best not to finish the sentence, not with the glare his sister sent him.

"Fine, I'll try to be civil, but don't expect me to not defend myself if she attacks me first."

/-/

The last thing Noctis had expected was to be engulfed in a fiery explosion.

Some red-hooded girl had tripped over a luggage cart, which just so happened to belong to a Schnee. It also just so happened that the luggage cart was full to the brim with suitcases of refined dust. The dust got into her nose, she sneezed, and it also just so happened to be water and lightning dust she was sneezing.

The result? A reasonable miniaturisation of a fuel-air bomb. Luckily he was wearing his mask, or else his lungs would have been burnt to a crisp.

Noctis stumbled back onto his feet, careful to stamp on a nearby shrub that was merrily blazing away next to him. It wouldn't do to start a fire, after all, not with the whole academy being surrounded by forest.

His eye twitched, his ire locking onto the Schnee heiress, whom was also getting up from the effects of the blast's shockwave. Somehow, she had escaped the worst of the explosion, along with the red-hooded girl who stood in the epicentre of it all. Just his luck. They got away spotless while he had to wipe soot off of the lenses of his mask.

While the Schnee verbally lashed the red-hooded girl in front of her, waving a jar of... fire dust of all things in her face, the red-hooded girl seemed to be desperately trying to apologise. He cast a glance at the suitcases of dust on the ground, which weren't even latched shut. No wonder they had spilled open.

"Why the hell didn't you lock these things?" He yelled, appalled by the stupidity of the Schnee. "If that was fire dust she set off, we would be dead now! Ashes!"

The Schnee, as well as the red-hooded girl, looked taken aback by his outburst, but to him it was justified. Dust, especially refined dust, judging by the vividness of the colours of the dust, was always transported in industrial-grade lockboxes _at the very least_. Most of the time, military-grade casings and containers were used just to be safe. That was the law mandated by the sheer volatility of the stuff.

Refined dust when exposed to the surroundings was even more explosive than nitroglycerin, which meant that every step of its production and transport was fraught with danger. Especially the extraction of dust. Dust mining, despite the improvement of safety standards by both new technologies and government mandates, was still a very risky job. All it took was one stray spark to set off the dust and kill everyone in the mine.

Sure, android miners could be used, but the Schnee Dust Company, which held a monopoly on its product, chose instead to hire cheap Faunus labour from the streets.

And now, after all that, the Schnee heiress held, in her hand, a glorified jam jar containing as much fire dust as would be used in the warhead of a surface-to-air missile. She had been waving it in the other girl's face, apparently.

The fact that the heiress of the SDC didn't seem to know anything about proper safety around Dust was sobering, to say the least.

"Excuse me? Who do you think you're talking to like that? Do you even know who I am?" She screeched. God, even her voice sounded stuck up.

"Firstly, I _do_ know who you are. Weiss Schnee, am I correct? Secondly, safety standards," he shot back, slowly walking closer to her face. Now that he was closer up, it turned out that she was almost a head shorter than him, and now he was starting to see a glimmer of doubt in her eyes. "You nearly killed us all _again_ by waving around a _glass_ jar full of fire dust in someone's face. What if she had slapped it away? What if you dropped it?" He admonished, getting right up to her face.

Weiss's hand twitched to the hilt of the sword at her side, a rapier unless he was mistaken, but he was faster. He reflexively drew his own sword, transforming it so that the blade shrunk into itself to reveal the barrel of a short range laser cannon. He pointed the laser cannon at the surprised face of the Schnee heiress before him, and then he realised what he had done.

"Wait! Sorry, I did that subconsciously," he said while lowered his weapon, retracting the hidden cannon but extending the blade as he did so. "I thought you were going for your own weapon, so I drew first."

Weiss just stared at him, whether in shock or outrage he didn't know, before a blur of black hair came between them and pushed them apart.

"Can you not be so trigger-happy?" The black-haired girl said, turning to him. "And can you put that away before you kill us all?" She said again, turning to Weiss this time.

"Who are you, anyway, princess?" The red-hooded girl finally spoke up.

As the Schnee opened her mouth to reply, the black-haired girl interrupted her with, "It's heiress actually. Weiss Schnee, heiress to the Schnee Dust Company, one of the largest producers of energy propellant in the world. Well, the largest in actual fact."

"Finally, some recognition." Weiss sniped, smugness permeating her tone.

"The same company infamous for its controversial labour forces and questionable business partners," Blake sniped back, wiping the smugness off of the former's face.

Seeing an opportunity to twist the knife, Noctis added, "By controversial labour forces, don't you mean underpaid Faunus miners? And by questionable business partners, don't you mean the entirety of the Atlesian military?"

Weiss, stunned, could only stammer out a few words in her anger before giving up and storming off. Noctis sheathed his sword before raising it in a universally recognised gesture. The black-haired girl, taking the hint, high-fived him, before moving to walk off. Before that, though, she said, "The name's Blake, by the way."

Blake then walked off, and Noctis moved to check on the red-hooded girl, who had collapsed to the ground on her back.

"Are you alright?" He asked.

"Yeah," she replied. "Just exhausted. What's your name?"

"Noctis," he said, focusing on the girl's face. It looked familiar somehow… "And what's yours?"

"Ruby. Ruby Rose."

Noctis's brain sputtered to a halt. Rose?

"Was Summer your mother?" He muttered.

"Yes," her reply, despite sounding distinctly more gloomy, still came nevertheless. "You know her?"

He chuckled sardonically, before saying, "She saved my life."

"People say that a lot," Ruby muttered.

He paused, before whispering, "I sometimes wonder whether it was worth it."

"What?"

He then lowered himself to sit down on the ground beside her. "I've got a semblance that rips me apart every time I use it and then puts me back again. I feel the whole damn thing every time, and it hurts to say the least. Apparently it's also ripping my mind apart, so I might just go insane as well," he rambled, lowering his head before he sighed deeply.

"Hey, we're in Beacon now. If there's anywhere where they can teach you to manage your semblance, then it's here," Ruby noted, causing Noctis's head to abruptly snap in her direction. "Besides, practice makes perfect, right? I kept running into trees when I first got my semblance, but eventually I stopped. I'm not sure about you, but surely your situation can't be that bad."

Noctis started to laugh at that, before stopping himself. Now, he might actually have a chance…

"Well, welcome to Beacon, then," he whispered.

"Welcome to Beacon," the voice next to him echoed.

They stayed that way for a bit, silently enjoying the view. At least, until Noctis felt the urge to make small talk again.

"You here with someone?" He asked.

"Yeah. My older sister, Yang."

Oh shit. When the explosion happened… where was Pyrrha, anyway? Fuck.

"Do you know where to go?" She asked back.

"No… we should go. It's getting dark anyway."

He moved to get up and start moving, but not before stretching out his hand for Ruby to pull herself up with. They were about to walk off when they heard someone behind them ask, "Hey... do you guys know where to go?"

"No," Noctis automatically replied as he turned to look at the voice. Pitch black eyes met bright blue ones and promptly tried to drill through the latter. The blue eyes widened, before their blonde owner stumbled back and promptly started puking onto the ground. Of course, the ground so happened to be right in front of Ruby's feet, and the younger girl leaped back with a honestly adorable shriek.

"Am I honestly that scary? To blondes especially?" He asked himself, resignation in his voice.

/-/

If you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you. Jaune never truly understood what that meant until he looked into the eyes of the man before him. Or rather, what were supposed to be eyes, because all he saw were endless pits of darkness, swirling and churning in almost imperceptible eddies.

He also felt the gaze of… something on him, something that was never meant to be perceived, something that was staring at him intensely, evaluating him as to whether he was a threat at all. Something… not of this world…

Simply the thought was enough to trigger his motion sickness again, and the remnants of his lunch, or at least what remained of it after the first few times he'd puked, came flying out of his mouth. That elicited a shriek of disgust from the girl beside him, who honest to god flew backwards in a flurry of rose petals.

Who the hell were these people? Why and how were they so... powerful? Could he get his fake transcripts back so that he could first shred them, then burn them and finally run away and hide under his bed?

The man sighed. "Look, I know I have that sort of an effect on people, but for the past two weeks all it's happened to are blondes. The first one tried to kill me, and now you lose your lunch. The deputy Headmistress, from what I hear, is a blonde as well. What is she gonna do? Expel me on the spot?" His greatcoat rustled at his feet, swaying in the wind as he talked. His voice was surprisingly... normal. He sounded like a regular teenage guy, but maybe a bit more demure and gentlemanly.

"The name's Jaune Arc! Short, sweet, rolls off the tongue - ladies love it!" He hazarded, holding out his hand.

The man took it in his left hand and shook it, before leaning in closer. "I'm Noctis. Noctis Argent. But if the first impression you left me with that intro - a flirt, playboy and womaniser - is actually who you are, then feel free to address me as your worst fucking nightmare. My sister is attending in the same cohort as us all, so, if you're exactly like the first impression I had of you… hands off."

Servos whined as the hand - which could only be a prosthetic, owing to both the superhuman grip strength and the lack of any ambient body heat - clamped shut on its own. Jaune winced as Noctis's hand slowly crushed his own in a vice-like grip.

The girl broke up the steadily mounting tension by skeptically asking "Do they?"

"They will! Well, I... I hope they will. My mom always says that... Never mind," he stammered. Noctis stared at him, his gaze softening.

"You were bluffing just now?"

"Well, yeah…?" Jaune replied unsteadily. "You couldn't tell?"

Noctis's masked face fell into his hand. "Sorry bout that, kid. Thought you were serious. You see, my sis hasn't been that great at romance at general… the one guy she had any sort of a relationship with turned out to be a massive two-timer and playboy. She wasn't happy about that, in fact she cried for a whole week. I was even more unhappy about that, unhappy enough to knock the perp around a bit. No lasting harm, though, I just traumatised him a bit…"

"A bit?" The girl beside him asked incredulously. "From what my sister's told me, you scared her so much she pissed her pants! Not that she'd appreciate me telling you this, of course..."

Noctis stared at her again. "Wait. Your sister is-"

"The person you got into a fight with at Junior's bar? Yep. She told me all about it, and from what she's told me about who she fought, I sorta guessed that you were the guy she was talking about."

"How intuitive of you," he deadpanned. "Please, I hope you don't hold anything against me…"

She giggled, probably due to the compliment, before saying, "I don't, but my sister might. Just don't get into a fight with her, alright? I don't want you two to hurt each other."

Noctis sighed again. "My sister said the exact same thing," he huffed.

The girl _blurred_ next to him, letting loose a flurry of rose petals that served as his only way of verifying her location at that speed. How was she so fast?

"Call me Ruby," the girl said.

"Jaune," he responded unsteadily.

"Say... do you know where to go? I've been meaning to ask you that, but we got a bit sidetracked," she suddenly asked.

"Oh, I don't know. I was following you two!"

Ruby looked lost. "Okay… maybe this way?" She pointed in the direction of a random path, leading to god knew where as far as he was concerned. Well, it wasn't as if he had any other choice, did he?

/-/

"It was here the entire time, Ruby! Just as I had been saying!" Noctis gestured at the massive hall around him, indignation permeating his voice. "All I said was, 'go towards the giant castle!' And instead, you lead Vomit Boy here and I on a wild Geist chase around the school complex!"

He wasn't being too harsh though, just mild annoyance making itself known.

Seemingly in response, a _very_ familiar voice made itself known to his ears.

"Ruby! Over here! I saved you a spot!"

He looked in the direction of the voice, and, sure enough, there was a vacant spot left for where his smaller acquaintance had been, who had disappeared in a blur of rose petals with a hasty "I gotta go!" More worryingly, there was a similar one near to where his sister had staked out her own claim to space. The two were easily within sight of each other, being less than eight metres apart at the very most.

He would have to play this very carefully.

"Oh, hey Noctis!" She waved cheerfully. She was more cunning than he had assumed, it appears. Now, to see whether the plan he came up with would work.

His blonde assailant, now identified as Yang, looked in his direction. Lilac eyes widened, before turning a shade of red that anyone who'd seen a Grimm before would easily identify.

"Fuck my life," he muttered, drawing his rapier and parrying dagger as he did. Yang activated her shotgun gauntlets, pointing the barrels in his direction.

"Look, lady, do you seriously want to do this again?" He asked incredulously. "Last time, I didn't even have my weapons, and I still blew most of your aura off. Plus, armour is fucking expensive. I don't want to have to replace it every damn time I meet you."

Yang slightly lowered her shotgun gauntlets at that, but she didn't drop her stance.

"You know what?" He directed at her. "Let's, as you said, 'kiss and make up', but without the kiss. Oh, and don't slug me in the face afterwards."

He sheathed his parrying dagger as a sign of goodwill, but kept his rapier in his hand. The air still seemed charged with tension, and it appears that they had attracted an impromptu audience from the way that everyones' heads were swivelling to look in their direction. The hesitation that Yang had from his sheathing his dagger was enough time for the whole thing to come together.

"Yang, stop!" Ruby, coming between them with a blue of rose petals, interrupted. "He's a friend!"

"You know, when I said there was no such thing as a negative friend, I take that back," she quipped. However, her eyes were slowly changing back to their natural lilac colour. Time for him to seal the deal.

Noctis sheathed his rapier and took off his faceplate, the locks for the armour plate clicking as he did.

"I'm not going to start anything, alright? Question is, are you?" Securing his mask to his side, he took off his helmet and threw it to the side, where it landed on the sleeping bag next to Pyrrha, whom was watching the scene closely. Finally, he pulled off his gas mask, letting it hang off his neck, and more importantly, exposing his face.

"My name is Noctis," he said, walking towards Yang and stretching out his hand as he did.

She took it, completing the motion that would cement the handshake. "I'm Yang," she said, "and this over here is my younger sister, Ruby, but I'm sure you've met her already since she calls you a friend."

"Yes, I've had the pleasure of meeting your sister already," he replied. Once they broke off the handshake, he turned to Ruby. "See, I told you it would work."

"Wait, what?" Yang interjected.

"We planned the entire thing, or rather, he did," Ruby explained.

"Excuse me?"

"We took an ever so slight detour through the entire school, which by the way was your sister's fault," he deadpanned, glaring at Ruby as he did. "But on the bright side, we had enough time to plan this little encounter. I suggested that it would be preferable to not have you breaking every set of armour I happen to own, and she agreed with me."

"I don't even know how to respond to that."

"Well, I do. See you tomorrow. I need to sleep," he said casually as he shrugged, leaving behind a speechless Yang and an increasingly apprehensive Ruby. No doubt her older sister would give her hell for this, but that wasn't his problem.

"I'm surprised that it went so well," his sister remarked. "Knowing you, I thought you would've just sprayed her down with laser fire."

"But I didn't," he said smugly. "I only conspired with her sister to engineer the perfect moment to bury the hatchet."

He had changed out of his combat outfit into a simple grey shirt, with an accompanying set of olive drab long pants, and was now lounging on his sleeping bag. The gleam of the same thermal reflective material as a space blanket adorned the bag, which Noctis felt was a smart touch. Efficiently retaining heat while minimising the amount of insulation required had decreased the bag's volume and mass, allowing it to be only as large as an average sized thermos while weighing less than half a kilo.

So what if Ruby still had the better engineered weapon? He still had the better sleeping bag. At least, it was still better than the abomination she was going to sleep on. That thing must be as large as a beer barrel when rolled up.

No, he was definitely not jealous of Crescent Rose. A scythe combined with an anti-materiel rifle… he could think of about a dozen ways to counter that thing, most of them involving either grabbing the pole or just dodging, but damn if it didn't look _cool_.

He was most definitely _not_ jealous, he assured himself. He was also _not_ bitter.

"That's still kind of a low blow, though. I mean, using her own sister against her?" Pyrrha shrugged. "I know you're the kind of person to do that, I've seen the security plans you've put up for my last few public appearances."

"I hope they were good enough."

"Good enough? The only place not covered by that security system you put up were the toilets, and I still think that the only reason you didn't put cameras there was because it would have been illegal."

"In my defence-"

"Who puts tripwires connected to alarms in corridors? I'm a four year consecutive Mistral tournament champion, not a mob boss or something. People line up to get my autograph, not to hurt me."

"There was one guy-" Noctis stammered.

"Who tried to throw a knife at me? Turned out he lost more than a hundred thousand lien in a bet on the guy I beat in last year's finals. I have aura, so stop treating me like I'm made of eggshells."

"All right," he conceded. "I admit defeat. Look, all I'm trying to do is keep you alive and happy. We might not even be on the same teams after tomorrow. I might not be there to protect you."

He pulled the cover of his sleeping bag up to his neck. Watching Weiss and Yang bicker had been entertaining, but now that Blake had blown out the candles, all he wanted to do was get some sleep.

"Don't worry. Wherever I could be, I'll be safe."

"Alright, sis. Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

There were still some people milling about, but for the most part, everyone was trying their best to sleep. Before long, the massive auditorium was enveloped in darkness, filled only with the sound of silence. Noctis tried his very best to fall asleep, but he couldn't.

Somehow, something was off.

He pulled himself out of his sleeping bag, sitting up to get a better view of his surroundings. Of course, there wasn't any light at all, but there was wind in the room.

Wind. In an enclosed room where all the windows were closed.

Periodically a gust of cold air would blow in his face, and it seemed to be getting stronger by the second. He wondered what was wrong, before he realised, with a start, that he knew that feeling.

Something was watching him.

With that realisation, all he felt was a tickling, an ever so slight sensation before he was yanked out of his sleeping bag.

/-/

The darkness and silence was ideal, in this case. Its wings were completely silent, and in this darkness, what could notice it? Its barbed tail lashed behind it, seemingly purposelessly, while it evaluated the situation before it. Silence was necessary, and it would not be broken in any case. It never spoke or laughed, and never smiled because it, like the rest of its kind, had no face at all to smile with, but only a suggestive blankness where a face ought to be.

Its body was black as night, like its wings were. It was dark enough that one could really only perceive it as a starless patch of the void, to be a gaunt, winged humanoid, with inward-curving horns upon her head, clawed hands on long arms, taloned feet at the ends of digitigrade legs, and a long, barbed tail.

It would have been nervous, if it had the capacity to feel at all. It couldn't just haul this one off carelessly, not at all. If it dropped its quarry by accident… the Crawling Chaos needed this one. For a plan, incomprehensible to all but itself.

No harm would be done. All it ever did was clutch and fly and tickle; that was the way of nightgaunts.

It swooped down to claim its objective, laying down the age-old wards that would ensure that the human would return to this spot when all was said and done as were all that had been taken by its ilk.

Massive bat-like wings flapped silently, buffeting the area with wind and not much else. The gale had apparently awakened its charge, which had risen from its rest to search for the nightgaunt with eyes. Normal, carbon-based eyes. Nyarlathotep would have found that amusing, somehow.

It reached down, to cradle the human in the manner that it had observed human mothers use to transport their offspring. Perhaps the hold would pacify it, making it easier to hold aloft than if it simply grabbed the human before it.

With its prize, it made to depart, massive wings fluttering soundlessly to carry it to its destination.

 **(Author's Notes: Bloodborne and Lovecraft are basically comparing a red apple to a green one, imo. I hope that no one would mind a three-way crossover! I'll try my best to make it to at least the end of Initiation by 8 Jan next year, but no promises, sadly. Somehow, someway, school life just gets in the way.)**


	7. Cosmic Beacon (Part 2 of 2)

Noctis jolted awake, in his sleeping bag once more. The morning sun shined in through the windows, and droves of students were now rustling in their own bags. He looked around in confusion. All that was just a dream? He pinched his arm, eliciting a sharp jolt of pain. Yep, he was awake. He hadn't been taken by… whatever it was after all. He turned to his side to see that his sister's sleeping bag was empty.

Oh, right. Initiation was today. He snuck a look at the clock on his scroll, and swore. Only two hours left? He practically ripped open his own bag, leaping out of it, before hurrying off to get his morning rituals done. Wouldn't be fitting to miss it, he thought.

He was in front of his locker, mulling over whether to bring the incendiary grenades or the flashbang grenades, when he finally found his sister. His gut told him to take the incendiary grenades, but his brain told him that flinging napalm around would only be a recipe for trouble. He wasn't a pyromaniac or anything, but who didn't appreciate a bit of fire in life? He looked to his side, to see Yang and Ruby having what looked to be a sibling heart-to-heart. Well, the way Ruby was stroking her weapon was a little disturbing, but never mind that.

"Morning, Ruby. And good morning, Yang," he said while waving at the sisters cheerily. "How's Initiation prep going?"

Ruby, clearly relieved to get away from her sister's questioning, replied, "Pretty well, in fact. How's yours?"

"Going well. Since we're on the topic, I wanted to ask you something."

"Yeah?" Ruby prodded. Yang, surprisingly, seemed content to sit back and watch the exchange.

"Should I bring incendiary grenades or flashbangs?"

"I'd go with the incendiaries. More firepower is never a bad thing," she replied. Most amusingly, her sister seemed to be trying to get her to suggest the comparatively less deadly flashbangs, if the way she was fervently shaking her head was any indication. Regardless, he proceeded to clip the napalm grenades to his belt.

"When I talked about learning to work together with new people, neither this nor what you two did yesterday was what I meant," Yang resignedly noted.

"Ridiculous! There's no way I put my gear in locker 636 yesterday!" Jaune's voice burst out behind him. "I would've remembered to count that high!"

"Actually, you did," Noctis reminded him. "You just thought it was locker 363. I told you to note it down, didn't I?"

"Yeah, you did." Jaune sighed. "Why does this have to happen today?"

"Murphy's Law," he chuckled good-naturedly.

He finished clipping all but one of his grenades to his belt, and moved to where his sister was, tightening the straps of his weapon's capacitor harness as he did. The backpack sized battery was one of the favourite parts of his weapon, because it had versatility. Scroll dead? Just use the battery to charge it. Friend or family member dead? Just use the battery as a makeshift defibrillator. He doubted that using it as medical equipment would be advisable, though.

He walked into a conversation that his sister was holding with Weiss Schnee of all people.

"This will be perfect! The smartest girl in class combined with the strongest girl in class! Together we will be unstoppable! I can see it now! We'll be popular! We'll be celebrities! We'll get perfect grades! Nothing can come between us now!" The Schnee girl rattled off. Pyrrha just stood there looking more and more uneasy, as the previously civil, despite leaning slightly towards hero-worship if the slight irritation on his sister's face was any indication, conversation devolved into a classic villainous monologue.

"You know, it's a shame you use a rapier, and not a gun. Preferably a golden gun. Too much monologue, too little humility. You remind me of one of those bad guys from some old spy movies I've watched," he snarked.

Weiss's incoming scathing reply was interrupted by none other than Jaune Arc coming between them. He had to remember to buy him something nice as a gift, if only for how incredibly convenient his timing was.

"You know what else is great? Me. Jaune Arc. Short, sweet, rolls off the tongue - ladies love it. Nice to meet you," he said.

Noctis could not help but notice the ever so slight undercurrent of apprehension under his suave tone. He had to stop the poor guy from putting up that fake bravado, or at least teach him how to bluff better.

Seventeen year old Huntresses-in-training might be taken in by his current skill, but someone who knows how to read into the things someone says, or to detect the undertones of someone's voice? Against someone trained to filter the lies in someone's words from the truth? Doing that might get him killed.

Weiss seemed exasperated, grumbling "You again?"

Pyrrha, on the other hand, moved herself into view, with a cheerful "Nice to meet you, Jaune!"

Noctis started to look at the scene more intensely, scrutinising every detail. He unclipped one of the incendiary grenades, tossing it up into the air before catching it. If this went how he thought it would go…

Then, with a promptness that threw even him for a loop, he pushed Pyrrha away and started to flirt with Weiss. He stopped himself from bursting into sarcastic applause. Way to read every single one of those social cues, Jaune Arc! Pushing aside the girl that was _very_ clearly interested in you to try to chat up the one who was so clearly _done_ with your shit.

He clipped back the grenade. Luck permitting, he would probably never need to use it in this context. Probably.

As the blonde moved unsettlingly close to the Schnee, she asked his sister for help. Said help was conveyed by Miló punching through the fabric of his hoodie, before pinning him to the wall by his hood.

"Would all first-year students please report to Beacon Cliff for initiation? Again, all first-year students report to Beacon Cliff immediately," a voice rang out over the intercom system. A smile broke out on his face. Social skills might not really be his thing, but killing Grimm? He was born for that.

/-/

Not even the sight of that twenty-foot-tall, multi-limbed, multi-eyed spider-human-thing that nearly made him scratch out his _own_ damn _eyes_ could kill his mood now, Noctis thought. The view from Beacon Cliff, despite the lacklustre naming convention, was marvellous. The updraft from the forest below caused his greatcoat to sway in the wind, and buffeted his masked face.

"For years, you have trained to become warriors, and today, your abilities will be evaluated in the Emerald Forest," Ozpin said.

This was the first time he had heard the headmaster speak, he noted. Apparently he had missed a speech yesterday that, according to his sister, was 'so short and concise that it could almost be considered pithy.' More importantly, he realised that Initiation was going to be held in the forest. And he was packing exclusively napalm. Dammit.

Apparently, he would be getting his teammates today, so he took a moment to evaluate whoever else was on the cliff. There was a girl next to him wearing what appeared to be a suit of plate armour, forged in the fashion of a knight's shell. The sword on her shoulder seemed more ornamental than functional, but no doubt both armour and weapon would be packing more surprises.

He idly heard Ozpin elaborate that "... the first person you make eye contact with after landing will be your partner for the next four years." He honestly didn't mind who he was partnered with, just that he or she was amicable. Essentially, the polar opposite of Weiss.

"After you've partnered up, make your way to the northern end of the forest. You will meet opposition along the way. Do not hesitate to destroy everything in your path... or you will die," the headmaster went on. Everything in his path? He smiled. Looks like he could still use the napalm grenades. Hopefully.

"You will be monitored and graded through the duration of your initiation, but our instructors will not intervene. You will find an abandoned temple at the end of the path containing several relics. Each pair must choose one and return to the top of the cliff. We will regard that item, as well as your standing, and grade you appropriately. Are there any questions?" Ozpin wrapped up. Jaune raised his hand, but the headmaster ignored him. "Good! Now, take your positions."

At that, he unsheathed his rapier and parrying dagger, and crouched low. He pushed his weight down on the platform he was standing on, feeling it give slightly beneath him, and grinned.

He was standing on a springboard, primed to fling him into the forest. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Weiss being flung into the forest by her own springboard. More and more springboards triggered down the line, eventually sending his knightly neighbour into the air. As he felt the springs beneath him uncoil, he tensed his muscles.

So it begins, he thought. Then, he was shot up into the air, along with a cloud of students.

Say what you want, but the view was even more magnificent up there, so Noctis took his time to enjoy the view before using his semblance to teleport to a safe height, bypassing the treeline but not avoiding the small pond that he ever so luckily managed to materialise over. At least he was safe, but not sound at all.

/-/

Lapis was starting to regret her decisions. She hurtled through the air like the three hundred kilo dead weight she was due to her armour, swearing as she did.

" **You should try to slow down a bit,"** Lazuli very helpfully suggested. **"You'll be fine because you're wearing the best damn suit of armour in Remnant, but surely you don't want to explain to Ozpin why it looks like a meteor fell in his forest."**

"At least tell me _how_ to slow down!" Lapis shouted back.

" **You have more rockets on your armour and weapon than some spacecraft have. Use that to your advantage."**

"Alright then," she grouched. "But if this still doesn't work, you're to blame." She spun in the air, firing off the rocket thrusters in her back, before spinning her lance to point to the sky. Then, she fired off the rockets in her lance. Surprisingly, it worked somewhat well, taking the edge off of her airspeed before she slammed into the hapless trees with all the grace of a Goliath.

" **You could have been an excellent lumberjack. The skill is there, but you just need practice,"** the voice in her head snarked. She looked behind her, witnessing the devastation she had left behind. A line of trees had been snapped at the trunk, leaving a veritable chasm carved out of the treeline.

"It's not _that_ bad. Come on, we make bigger messes in Vacuo every two weeks at least."

" **Those poor trees, what did they ever do wrong?"**

"Shut up."

As if to drive home the point of her pointless destruction, a guy wearing what looked like a portable bush coupled with what appeared to be a goddamn _tweed waistcoat_ and white long-sleeved shirt landed gracefully next to her. It was as if he couldn't decide between looking like a dork and being stealthy. In a probably futile nod to practicality, he happened to be wearing flight goggles and an oxygen mask attached to a small air tank at his side - the latter of which was promptly removed and the tank's valve closed. From the light emanating from the scroll strapped to his wrist, Lapis hazarded that he was probably using the device to control the _rocket boots_ attached to his legs. She stared enviously at them.

"Lazuli, why don't we have rocket boots?"

" **The Allfather probably never expected his armour to go airborne. He lived in a desert, after all."**

She sighed before looking at the guy's head. His gaze had moved to meet her own, despite the full face helmet she wore. "Hey," she said.

" **Way to go, Lapis! The first time talking to your partner of four years, and the first thing you say is 'hey?'"**

"I'm Lapis, and the stupid voice in my head is Lazuli. Who are you?"

The man stared at her for a bit, his rather chunky flight goggles covering gentle brown eyes, before replying, "I'm Icarus."

He stretched out his hand, and Lapis took it in her own massive gauntleted fist. Her hand closed shut with all the grace of an industrial clamp, eliciting a pained wince from her partner.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" She said, quickily loosening her grasp. She looked at Icarus's hand, which was very starkly bare, and inspected it to ensure that she hadn't accidentally crushed it.

"It's okay," Icarus whimpered. "I've had worse."

/-/

Noctis clambered out of the pond. Thankfully all of his equipment was waterproof, otherwise he would have been electrocuted by the battery he wore on his back. Dynamic entry be damned, he was lucky to be unharmed. He picked his weapons out of the pond, shaking them to get the worst of the scum off, before swearing under his breath. Look like he'd have to clean it out with a Beowolf on the way.

Then, he saw a blur of grey flash past next to him, before a resounding, sickening snap filled his ears. The spray of soil that had been kicked up by the impact bounced off his helmet, while he flinched back and looked for the source. Turning his head, he saw the knightly figure that had been next to him sprawled out on top of a rock. Her visor had been lowered, but Noctis still managed to make eye contact with the mortally wounded girl.

Blood and, more concerningly, a clear fluid flowed in rivulets down the hunk of granite she had landed on, indicating that she had shattered her back with that landing.

As if to reassure him that his partner was okay, she raised her hand, before saying "It probably looks horrible, but I shall be fine in a bit."

She reached down to her broken spine with her hand, bracing the injured part of her abdomen with the other before, with another sickening crack, she wrenched her spine back into position. A nauseatingly sticky sound echoed as her spine seemed to knit itself back together, and she finally rolled off the rock onto her feet.

"Told you I would be fine. My name is Carmine," she said as if she had not broken her back over a boulder only seconds before. "What shall I call you?"

He stared, dumbfounded, before he shakily replied, "I'm Noctis."

"Great," she said. "Now that is all done with, let us find these Grimm that you people keep talking about. I hope they present a sufficient challenge to my skill."

She didn't know what Grimm were?

A growl to their left answered her boast. Then, another one joined it, to their right. More and more joined them, both in front of them and behind them. Noctis span around, realising that they were surrounded by pairs of baleful red eyes, that stared with them with something remarkably close to bloodlust.

"It looks like _they_ found _us_. We'll see about your skill," he responded, unclasping a grenade from his belt. The slivers of light that managed to penetrate the thick canopy of the trees gleamed off the red shell of the incendiary grenade, shimmering as he pulled the pin before he reared back and flung it in the direction of a particularly large cluster of Beowolves.

"My skill would certainly be adequate for pests such as these," his newfound partner said haughtily, drawing her still sheathed zweihander from her back and hefting it on her right shoulder.

The sheathed sword seemed to transform in her hands, the blade twisting and lengthening to form the barrel of a gun while the area near the haft shifted into a trigger mechanism and a faux-wooden stock. Carmine hefted the still transforming weapon, taking out a drum magazine and slapping it into its place on the top of what Noctis only now realised was a LMG.

"Get down!" Carmine shouted, hefting the gun in her hands to fire it. She span towards Noctis, and the hapless boy only just managed to teleport out of the way before she let loose a burst of rounds that assaulted his eardrums with the sound of tearing cloth.

"What?" Noctis hollered, scrambling back to his feet - he hadn't exactly watched where he was teleporting to, and had ended up back in the scummy pond - to look back and witness as a massive Ursa, riddled with gaping holes, collapsed to the ground in a dead heap.

"Are you okay?" Carmine yelled, turning her head towards him.

"What the fuck do you think? You nearly shredded me with that damn thing, along with the fucking Ursa!"

The Ursa was indeed extremely dead, with the corpse being mangled almost beyond immediate recognition save for defining characteristics like the paws. That is, before even that was vaporized by the orange fireball that burst outwards from where Noctis's napalm grenade had landed.

The Beowolves that it had landed among had been all but immolated, and the napalm had stuck itself on the surrounded trees which were now merrily burning away in a rapidly growing inferno.

Noctis thrust his rapier through the eye socket of a Beowolf, before kicking the dissolving corpse away to attack the larger Alpha. The Grimm swiped at his head with its claws, which Noctis parried away with his dagger, before swiping upwards with his rapier. The swipe was dodged, but he used the momentum to bring his dagger up to plunge it into the hollow of its collarbone.

"Got you," Noctis snarled. The dagger bit home, and he pulled the Alpha Beowolf towards him, running it through on his rapier to yank out his dagger.

Even before the Grimm's body finished collapsing to the ground he had spun around, the blade of his rapier withdrawing to expose the laser cannon, and with a resounding crack and an actinic flash of scarlet light a third Beowolf dropped to the ground with a gaping, charred hole in its torso.

"Carmine, we need to go, now!" Noctis shouted, watching as his partner mowed down yet another hapless bunch of Beowolves. She stared for a second, seemingly shocked at the crackling blaze that was rapidly threatening to encircle them.

"We should go," she agreed, kicking away the dead Grimm before fishing out an antique-looking brass compass, about the size of her palm, from her side. "North is this way. Do you have a plan to get these creatures off our backs?"

"Yes," he replied, grinning savagely as he did. "Yes, I do. Throw as much ordnance as possible behind us, and hope for the best."

He drew one of his grenades, pulled the pin and threw it towards the horde of Grimm, before repeating the process with another one. Carmine turned around to cover their retreat, spraying yet more rounds before her gun clicked empty and prompted her to detach the now empty drum magazine. As they turned north and ran, the grenades went off in a thunderous explosion that consumed everything behind them in a firestorm.

"I hope Ozpin won't be too mad that we started a forest fire," he remarked.

"Well… he did say to destroy anything in our path, did he not? I suppose some property damage shall not be amiss…" Carmine pondered, before raising her visor. She stretched out her hand, at least the one that hadn't been consumed by a tumour of flesh with eyes. "To the start of a successful partnership, Noctis. May we be the best partners in all of Remnant."

"I would say that you shouldn't aim that high, but it's a virtue to not aim low either, so go big or go home, I guess," Noctis replied, shaking the offered hand. The eyes on her left arm stared at him, gleaming with indiscernible emotion. She did look rather pretty, in his opinion, but right now his new partner seemed... off, for some reason.

They ran for a while before Carmine signaled for them to stop. She hefted her now empty LMG on her shoulder, letting the attached bipod dangle behind her back. "They have stopped their pursuit, so I think it best for us to just walk."

Then they walked, Noctis formulating a question in his head as he did.

"I'm just wondering, and forgive me if I'm wrong, but do you have aura?"

"Aura? What's that?"

"Well, I guess you don't have it and _probably_ don't need it, from what I've seen, but aura is basically a biological energy shield that supposedly stems from your soul. It helps Huntsmen take damage that would kill normal people, and to perform feats that would otherwise be superhuman."

"Is there any way to activate it? My blood may help me to recover from even severe injury, but preventing injury in the first place would be a major boon."

"I'm sorry," he interrupted. "But how much damage can you recover from? Any upper limit?"

"Well…" Carmine rather worryingly hesitated. "I have gotten beheaded once, during training, but I am pretty sure my head grew back after slightly more than five minutes. It was not possible for me to sense anything without my head, of course, but you get the idea."

"You've… been _beheaded_ and _lived_. Your _head_ grew _back_ …" Noctis muttered. "You know what? I'll unlock your aura, even though you seem _completely_ fine without it."

He leaned over, placing a gloved hand on her bare forehead. Noctis idly noted that Carmine's forehead was cold - as if she was the same temperature as her surroundings - before he began the ritual.

"For it is in loyalty that we achieve immortality. Through this, we take on the thankless yet eternal duty to serve and protect. Infinite in strength and relentless in will, I release thy soul, and by my shoulder conscript thee," he recited, taking a deep breath before pulling his hand off.

His expression became one of puzzlement. "You're supposed to be glowing right now, but I'm sure I did everything right. People normally put their hand to the recipient's chest at the second stanza, but I think you know why I didn't do that. You feel any different?"

"...no?" Carmine muttered, the tumour covering her left arm shrinking back into the one-handed _anti-tank rifle_ she had. "Do you want to test it? Try shooting me in the forehead for instance."

"Shoot you in the forehead? I guess you'll be fine, but are you sure?" He raised his rapier's laser cannon, raising it to its target. "Alright. Firing in three… two… one," he said before pulling the trigger.

The top part of Carmine's head, comprising of her forehead, eyes and nose, disappeared in a crimson flash of light. All that remained was her mouth, her jaw and one ear. That is, except for the charred bone and burnt gristle that used to be her face, skull, and brain.

"By God! Are you okay?" He shouted. "Answer me!"

She raised a hand to forstall him, somehow getting the direction right despite having no eyes and only one ear, before saying, "It might take a few minutes, but I will be fine in a while. I lack my sight, and one ear is missing, but they shall grow back soon."

"I'll probably never get used to this," he grouched. "Looks like you can't have aura, I guess? The hand-on-chest part is optional, and not applicable for you anyway for obvious reasons..." Noctis dropped off awkwardly, face redeeming and coughing into his fist before finding the will to continue. "In conclusion, I'll have to consult someone more experienced on this..."

Suddenly, he sensed something. Something incoming fast.

He sheathed his rapier, transforming the sheathed weapon into its laser rifle form, before crouching down and pulling Carmine down with him.

"There's something coming, and it's coming fast. I'll cover you for as long as I can, but you have to grow your head back asap."

He took aim at a particular group of trees that were rustling violently, scanning the general area of the disturbance with the scope of his rifle. His finger twitched back as he pulled the trigger, eliciting a similar actinic flash of crimson.

However, instead of being almost blindingly bright like the shot from his rapier's laser cannon was, it somehow seemed more concentrated, more saturated. The closest comparison, Noctis thought, would be that between a shotgun and a rifle. The hidden laser cannon was meant for short range power, especially in a close-quarters fight, while the laser rifle was meant to pierce any conceivable target at range.

The beam punched into a tree directly next to the rustling, blasting through it entirely and causing the tree to slam into the ground with an almighty crash.

"That was a warning shot!" He yelled. "Disengage any and all weapons, and put your hands where I can see them!"

He knew that making a move like this was risky, especially if the source of the rustling was, in fact, Grimm. However, he wanted to minimise any possible instances of friendly fire, especially if the target could have been his sister. Even if they weren't, it would probably be frowned on to attack non-hostiles.

He saw two pairs of hands, one pair of normal-sized human hands and one pair of armoured hands that could have belonged to a giant, erupt from the vegetation with almost indecent haste.

/-/

It turned out that the ghillie cloak he was wearing was absolutely _perfect_ for this kind of terrain. Essentially, he essentially became invisible if he crouched or went prone.

There was a sort of appeal to it, he thought. Bringing completely silent, unseen death to those that deserved it most. He had prided himself on the fact that everyone he killed had been 'dirty' in one way or another. Complicit in the most heinous of crimes.

One of his first assignments had been a Dust refining baron who had paid off practically the entire Mantlean council to overlook the fact that the private military company he supposedly hired to guard his mines and refineries was actually raiding Faunus settlements to kidnap slaves destined for the same mines and refineries that their kidnappers were supposed to defend.

In the end, Icarus shot the bastard in the head as he slept from around a kilometre away before infiltrating the compound in which he lived and extracting incriminating evidence which the White Fang then 'sold' to media representatives in Vale. The Atlesian media had had a field day, the White Fang had discreetly received millions of lien for their trouble, and Mantle had to have emergency elections because a third of their council cabinet had been forced to resign. All in all, another feather to add to his cap.

His reputation had become inflated to the point that he had become some sort of boogeyman, an unstoppable ghost who could kill anyone. All those that he had been paid to or ordered to kill… had died. Anyone that had tried to kill him… had died. That was the way things were.

Even with all that under his belt, his new partner _still_ scared him. With that colossal suit of all-encompassing armour she wore, he was barely tall enough for the top of his head to reach the massive plates of armour that protected his shoulder. The weapon she used, a cavalry lance with rockets attached for good measure, was about the same proportions of an average twelve-year-old child, and Icarus had no doubt at all that there would be another equally massive ranged form concealed within. But that wasn't what scared him.

No, what scared him was that _voice_ in her head. She would suddenly start talking to herself, and receive answers that either indicated mild omniscience or genius-level deductive ability. It had deduced his past as a professional contract killer just from her looking at him for _ten minutes_. The only saving grace he had was that it seemed to not be able to discern specific details, say like which organisation he had worked for. It could tell that he was a killer-for-hire, but it couldn't deduce that he was formerly from the White Fang. Thank god for small mercies like that.

Of course it also so happened that there was common ground between the two, with Lapis only very recently having left life being a contract killer for the Legion. Icarus honestly didn't know what to feel about that.

On one hand, he had heard of the nightmare scenario of pseudo-civil war in the city of Vacuo between anarchists, drug cartel members and the Legion, but on the other hand relations between the White Fang and the Legion were never any better than allies of convenience.

The Legion was less than subtle about its intrinsic racism, and fighting had occasionally broken out between external branches of the two groups. However, the main leaders of the Legion had always been prompt and for the most part, they were sincere in their foreign relations.

There were two Centurions of the Legion for every kingdom in Remnant, and the collective of all eight of them served as a council of sorts. However, any decision they made could be either approved or vetoed at will by someone only known as the Praetorian. Not a lot of information was available to the outside world about the enigmatic figure, except that they were nigh unbeatable in combat, either through sheer martial skill, an overpowering semblance as a trump card, or both.

The Legion was much, much younger than the White Fang, having existed only for about four years at most, but what it lacked in quantity was more than made up for in quality. Legionaries were equipped remarkably similarly to an actual military, with even low-level grunts outfitted with body armour, top-of-the-line weapons and even armoured vehicles. The White Fang, in comparison, would be hard-pressed to replicate even one of the Legion's armoured divisions, tanks and all, of which the Legion itself had _multiple_.

However, from what he could pick out from Lapis's _very_ comprehensive account of how well she knew the Praetorian and his Legion, she was on first-name terms with the Praetorian herself, and actually seemed to be a sort of moderating influence on the man himself. Having a Faunus contract killer be that close to him personally meant that the Praetorian himself wasn't actually racist, just his lieutenants. In a way, that was even more worrying.

"-and there was this time that the two of us went out for drinks, you see," Lapis explained. "Turns out that the bartender wasn't Scourge after all, but we still got so hammered that it wouldn't have mattered anyway. Brad had to take us back to HQ, and by then we were so drunk that the two of us went up to his quarters…" She trailed off, finally realising what sort of tale she was telling. "I've said way too much, so you should know by now what I'm talking about."

Icarus did in fact, and corrected himself. She was on first-name terms with the Praetorian, while at the same time sharing the poor guy's bed. Not that Lapis was inadequate or anything, but her sheer overwhelming _presence_ probably meant that whoever she was in a relationship with was probably being dragged along for the ride most of the time.

His musings about his partner's relationship with the youngest and one of the most powerful gang leaders in Remnant was interrupted rather rudely by an Ursa charging at him. He dug in his heels and flared the engines of his jump boots, propelling himself backwards unharmed.

Lapis, on the other hand, literally rocketed into the fray, kicking up vegetation and soil in a massive spray behind her as she carved a furrow into the ground with her own rocket-propelled body. She plowed into the Ursa lance first, sending the Grimm flying with her before she slowed to a stop, sending even more detritus flying and leaving the smoking body to hurtle away into the undergrowth.

A cacophony of growls reached their ears, however, and a multitude of pairs of baleful red eyes met their own. Icarus crouched down to the ground, lining up the head of one of the Ursas heading what appeared to be a horde of Grimm in his crosshairs, before pulling the trigger.

The bear-like form before him slammed into the ground, halting the advance of the Beowolves bringing up the rear before they simply clambered over their dead compatriot.

He worked the bolt before lining up another shot, pulling the trigger and watching as another Ursa bit the dust. Again, the onslaught was momentarily delayed, before they simply overcame the barrier.

He heard a high-pitched whining sound next to him, wondering what it was before he reasoned that it was Lapis bringing her ranged weapon to bear. A metallic, synthetic sounding voice saying "[LASER CHARGING]" reached his ears, but he thought nothing of it.

He fired yet again, yet another Ursa falling to the gaze of his Labyrinth. Was it just him overthinking it, or were the Beowolves using the Ursas as meat shields?

"Lapis, I hope that that laser you're charging up is up to the job, cause we've got a lot of incoming hostiles on our hands!"

"It's more than enough. Get down!"

He heard the synthetic voice again, only this time he heard "[LASER DISCHARGING]." The thunderous thrum of something ripping through the air assaulted his eardrums, the sound of power itself revealing itself with the majesty it well deserved.

A gargantuan beam of the purest sky blue energy, retina-blinding in its brightness and looking entirely to Icarus like the all-consuming fury of some primordial god of light, erupted less than a metre away to his right and promptly swept the entire horde in front of him. His aura took the edge off of the mind-numbing heat just from being in the immediate vicinity of the beam, but the incoming horde wasn't as lucky. Beowolves simply vaporized into nothing but smoke, while larger Grimm got cut into pieces by the laser, leaving behind gently steaming flash-burned hunks of flesh that were already beginning to dissolve into nothing.

After what felt like an eternity, the beam died away with a steadily weakening whine, leaving behind a shell-shocked Icarus, a very smug looking Lapis and a few surviving Beowolfs, mere splinters of the armada they had faced down only a minute earlier. Their previously glowing red eyes had been dimmed, boiled away by the sheer heat that had accompanied the laser. Melted flesh and charred bone spoke of the flash-burns that they had somehow survived, but they were much worse for wear, only able to blindly stumble about.

"Lapis… " He began, then decided there wasn't any point remonstrating with her. She'd followed his orders after all, and things had worked out as well as they ever did. "That was…"

Words, for what was to be the first of many, _many_ times, failed him.

"Resourceful?" She suggested cheerfully, apparently completely unaware how close she had come to reducing her partner to so much ash.

"You know what? Let's just go with that." He stammered, still somewhat in shock.

Lapis just started walking over to the surviving Grimm to deliver the coup de grâce, calmly reaching over to grasp the skill of one of the blinded Beowolves before increasing the pressure of her grip to crush it like an egg.

Another one tried to blindly swipe at her with its claws, but she almost casually backhanded the creature, knocking it over and leaving it open for its assailant to reduce its head to a smear of gristly pulp on the forest floor.

A third one decided to attack her from behind, only for Lapis to kick its legs from underneath it and to heft it onto her back in a fireman's carry. The Beowolf could only helplessly scratch at the heavily armoured colossus holding it aloft before it was brutally slammed down onto an equally heavily armoured knee, eliciting a painfully audible crack, almost as loud as a gunshot, as the Grimm's spine was shattered by the blow. The limp corpse fell off of Lapis's knee, the entire body bent backwards at an angle that Icarus would have needed a protractor to measure. The last surviving creature, an Ursa that had come out mostly unscathed, turned to bolt.

Icarus, snapping out of his shock, transformed his rifle to its glaive form before activating his jump boots. It had run far enough into the trees that he couldn't get a clear shot, not anymore at least. He flew in front of the fleeing Grimm, slashing at its neck as he overtook it, before landing in its path. The Ursa reared up to swipe at him with its claws, but he used that opportunity to stab the offending creature with the tip of his glaive - a tip he designed specifically to punch through even bone.

It easily pierced the hide of the Grimm, causing it to recoil from him. He then spun the glaive around, swinging it to slash through the Ursa's left eye in a spray of black ichor before shoving the butt of his weapon, tipped with a metal spike, into its throat. It collapsed to the ground, gurgling as it drowned in its own black blood before Icarus swung the glaive in a last downwards arc to separate its head from its body.

Lapis rocketed in, sliding to a stop next to him. "Come on, you could've left that last one for me," she complained good-naturedly.

"Don't be greedy. You already wiped out most of that swarm with one shot," he retorted. "One shot, I might add, that nearly turned me to ash."

"One shot, I might add, that saved your ass," she parroted.

The crash of a tree falling to the forest floor interrupted them, causing them both to jump and look back at the destruction they caused. The laser had also bisected a large number of trees, and now the patch of forest they had just left looked like it had just been subjected to damage equivalent to years of illegal logging all at once. They then looked northwards and realised that there was a massive pillar of smoke rising out of the distance.

"You realise that we have to go through that, right?" Lapis asked. "Does your mask have an air filtration system?"

"I have a stored air supply, for high-altitude flying and stuff like that, so I guess that could work."

His new partner shrugged. Her lance was now in its inert form, magnetically locked into a slot in her back. She wasn't trying to be intimidating at all, Icarus thought. She's just naturally terrifying.

"You know, we make a great team," she noted.

"For us, yes. For anything around us? Not at all," he deadpanned.

The conversation continued along that vein until someone started shooting at them.

/-/

"So that's what we've been doing," Icarus explained. Noctis nodded sagely. "But I guess it hasn't been as entertaining as finding out that your teammate can literally _regrow her head_." He stressed the last three words out, still somewhat shocked.

He and Lapis had walked up to a still regenerating Carmine, unfortunately, and they had understandably panicked when they saw the seemingly dead girl in front of them. They had then panicked even more when Carmine, still missing everything above the bridge of her nose, had went ahead and told them that she would be fine. Noctis had then tried to explain the situation.

Lapis had worryingly quickly accepted that Carmine both had no aura to speak of and was able to easily regenerate from presumably fatal injury, while Icarus was still catching up.

Now they were having a break while waiting for Carmine's head to regrow. Said nearly headless girl had decided to take the opportunity to unwrap and munch on an energy bar that she had fished out of her pocket. However, her skin was still not regenerating, in favour of more critical areas such as her skull and her brain, therefore subjecting her unfortunate teammates to watch her easily visible jaw muscles move every time she chewed. Unsurprisingly, the other three had long since lost their appetite.

"Alright, so this is where we are," Carmine said, pointing the specific spot out on a holographic display of a map emanating from a scanner on her left gauntlet. One of her eyes had regrown in its socket in the time she had taken to eat something, and was now spinning around wildly to compensate for the lack of a compatriot. Minuscule muscles in the socket either pulled taut or relaxed to turn the eyeball whichever way it wished to face, and a long fleshy cord, the optic nerve, extended out of the back of the white fleshy ball to lead into a still reforming brain. "We need to move north, to this ridge line over here. From files in the headmaster's computer, I have triangulated the location of our objective to this precise area."

"Wait," Noctis said, raising his hand in the manner of a schoolchild asking a question of his teacher. "You hacked the headmaster's scroll."

"Yes," Carmine replied smoothly. The single eyeball, marked by a red iris, span around to point its pupil in his direction. "Do you have any problem with that?"

"Not at all."

"Excellent. There are two possible locations for the ruined temple he spoke of. One is inside an underground cavern, but apparently that had caved in only a few years after the end of the Great War. The other is this structure on the top of one of the cliffs, and is visible from aerial footage of the vicinity."

Noctis felt something pull at his gut as Carmine laid out the options. His intuition told him to go for the cave, even though his brain told him that it was highly unlikely. His gut feeling was very insistent, however, filling him with a sense of déjà vu that tore at him, filling him with an overwhelming conviction that the cave really was their true objective.

"The visible location is definitely a decoy. Ozpin wouldn't put the real relics somewhere that obvious. He probably found a passage into the cavern, and put the actual relics there," Noctis stated.

"I agree with him," Lapis boomed. "See that small peak there? The real craggy one? That's Nevermore nesting central. I don't know about you, but I've found a few feathers lying around here, and from the size of them, they look to be around the size of Bullheads. However, we haven't seen them, probably because the rest of the students have them distracted."

Icarus pointed out a series of valleys on the holographic map of the forest. "Beacon Academy itself is to the south of here. The spring pads are somewhere closer to south-east. From where they were facing-" At that, he drew a line from the cliffs to a valley near to the centre of the map. "-the springs were supposed to launch us to this valley. From the valley, there would be a relatively straight trek to the area Carmine indicated. However, on the way back they would have to go onto this bridge to get across the crevice there."

He jabbed his finger at a stone bridge, stretching across a massive ravine carved into the landscape on the north-east of the map. "There's barely any cover there, and since it's so close to the Nevermore nesting site, anyone there would be dive bombed so much it would make an air strike look relatively calm. And of course if an Ariadne battery decides to camp out on either side of the crevice, the place is an obvious no-go. Due to various reasons, we are now here," he said, pointing to a wooded area about two kilometres from the mouth of the cave if the scale of the map was correct. "Separated from the other students and off course from the path Ozpin planned for us, but it turns out that this benefits us. You see, from where we are we could reach both the cave and the ruined temple, so we could technically check both locations before relocating to home base."

"Excuse me," Carmine asked, this time raising her own hand. "But what are Ariadnes?

"Imagine a Grimm spider about the size of a shipping container," Noctis explained. "Now, imagine an organic bone construct which is literally the Grimm equivalent of a 155mm howitzer, except for the fact that it fires twice as fast as the one used by us. It fires shells made out of bone and filled with organic explosive compounds, primed to explode on impact just like a normal HE shell. Slap the Grimm-made howitzer onto the top of said spider, and now you've got one run-of-the-mill Ariadne.

"Keep in mind that they usually turn up in groups of four, which are called 'batteries'', similar to the logistical terms used by the regular army," Icarus continued. "The most we've seen at any one time were five combined batteries, and they only turned up during a visit that the Grimm Troupe paid to Vale about fifty years ago. Still, they levelled a large part of the city with the barrage they put up, so even one fifth of that number is _not_ to be underestimated."

They got up to leave, Carmine deactivating the hologram as she did. The entirety of her head had reformed by that point, allowing them to move on. Still, she had one question niggling at the back of her mind, and she spoke it. "What is the Grimm Troupe? You said something about it just now, and Ozpin's files had nothing about it."

The stares the other three gave her made her instantly regret asking. Hesitantly, Lapis answered her question. "The Grimm Troupe… are a group of the oldest, most experienced and thus most deadly Grimm to exist. They just… wander around, leaving nothing but death, destruction and utter terror behind. The older Grimm get, the larger and more powerful they become. The more combat experience they get, the smarter they become. The Troupe is exclusively made up of Grimm with a large enough individual kill count that they become self-aware, which is not common _at all_."

Lapis took a deep breath, seemingly steadying herself, before continuing. "They are led by the oldest, most powerful Grimm in existence. We know that because he said so himself, which says a lot. A Grimm that can _speak_? That's unheard of, other than this particular case. Evidence also points to him having genius-level intellect. We call him the Troupe Master, as in Troupe Master Grimm, because he calls himself Grimm. He's around two and a half metres tall, which kind of breaks the convention of size equals age, but his power more than makes up for it."

"How powerful is he?"

"Very," she said, grinding out the word. A seemingly mundane verb seemed to morph with its subject, sounding like a sledgehammer of pure leaden hatred slamming down onto an anvil of yielding flesh. "He wears this sort of cloak, which seems to actually be a set of wings, that he can use in melee combat. He can form blades on his arms with it, or turn his body into a drill. He can also use it to send spikes shooting up from the ground to impale targets. However, his real strength is his pyrokinesis, his control of scarlet flame."

"Scarlet flame?"

"His pigments, he calls it. Pigments on the canvas that is human suffering. He can even teleport around and telepathically control lesser Grimm to reinforce his ranks."

Lapis's seemed to be trying to exhale the information as fast as possible, to get it out of her mouth as soon as possible. Carmine's early confidence from her victory over the so called 'lesser' Grimm curled up in a corner and died.

"The worst part… it's when he goes ahead and wipes an entire place off of the map. You see, the source of his fire seems to be the inside of his cloak, and in this attack, he turns it _inside out_. He literally becomes a _second sun..._ nothing's left after that... nothing but glass."

"Interesting," Carmine muttered. Perhaps the nuclear warheads would have to be used...

"He's not alone as well. One of his two lieutenants is a massive dragon that, besides from breathing black fire that sticks to any surface, spawns smaller Grimm out of pools of liquid that drip down from under its chin. Simple."

"What is the other one?"

"The other is a horse-like form with a humanoid torso fused onto its back. The humanoid bit can grow weapons made out of bone from its hands, say a cavalry saber, or a lance, or even a blunderbuss sorta thing that fires flechettes made of bone. The bad thing about him is that he can grow and discard plates of bone armour at will, and can also regenerate any damage we deal to him - not unlike yourself."

"The dragon is more of a close air-support and a dropship, if you ask me, and the horse-thing specialises in direct assault," Lapis spat out, turning to the two guys trailing behind, before sighing. "And you two, before you ask. Yes, I am a Valhalla survivor. No, I don't want to talk about it. I'm just bringing Carmine here up to speed."

She turned back to Carmine. "Valhalla was a lesson we learned. The Troupe absolutely _crushed_ it, bringing so many lesser Grimm that the defences were completely overwhelmed. My home was meant to be a sort of retirement town for Huntsmen and their kin, so we had over a thousand people with aura, excluding their families. Our theory is that the Troupe Master saw the number of people with aura, and scaled appropriately. Of course, 'scaling appropriately' meant that he brought enough Grimm to blot out the sun," she chuckled bitterly, wistfulness permeating her every word. "That's why, legally, only Huntsmen and those enrolling in Huntsman academies are allowed to have aura, and not regular citizens. Too high aura-user concentration paints a target on the entire region."

Carmine's internal console chimed, indicating to her that they had reached their destination. "We have reached the cave. At least, my navigational system says so."

"Great," Lapis, despite still sounding a bit depressed, had significantly more cheer in her voice thanks to the change of subject. "Let's go treasure hunting."

/-/

Once they entered the cave, Noctis immediately felt grateful for the mask he wore. Rock dust saturated the air so much that the beam from the headlights of Lapis's armour was visible as literal cones of light, and it looked like Carmine, the only one of them without a sealed respirator system in their armour, was having a hard time with it.

The honestly rather informative murals of armies of men marching against giant beasts was sadly damaged by the deep scratches lining the walls. One of them even had a puncture mark through it, the hole leaking a glowing orange fluid Noctis identified as Deathstalker venom. However, the venom seemed to be unnecessary since the hole was wide enough for him to easily slot his arm into. "Guys, it seems like we missed a one hell of a party," he remarked.

"How are the three of you even able to breathe?" Carmine asked between hacking blood-flecked coughs. "The only reason I am still walking is that I can regenerate my cells, and thus do not need to breathe, so how are you three doing it?"

"My armour has insanely good air filters, because I kick up a hella lot of dust when boosting around," Lapis explained. "Icarus has an oxygen tank for high-altitude flight, while Noctis here is wearing a rebreather normally used only by firefighters, so we're all fine here."

"I have a spare gas mask," Noctis suggested. "It's not as good as my rebreather, but it's compact enough for you to wear it under that helmet of yours. You'd have to raise the visor though."

"Why do you have a spare gas mask?" Icarus asked suspiciously.

"I use gas grenades. Technically illegal, but large quantities of chlorine work really well for incapacitating or terminating pretty much anything with eyes, skin, or a respiratory system."

"I've seen what it does, thank you very much," Lapis replied. "The exterior burns are bad enough, but when they're in the lungs..." she involuntarily shivered.

"Take the mask," Noctis said, passing it to her partner. "It's probably better to not ask why I have it, though."

"Thank you so much," she said while pulling off her helmet, cradling it under the crook of her arm while pulling on the gas mask. Then, she slipped the helmet on, but leaving open the visor as her partner had suggested. Carmine took a deep breath. "Again, thank you," she said as she smiled at Noctis, even though he definitely couldn't see it.

"No problem," he replied, before stopping. "Actually, one problem. We've reached the cave-in, so does anyone have anything to clear it?"

Lapis raised her hand. "I do," she said, pointing to herself.

"Alright then," Noctis shrugged. "Do your thing."

Rather concerningly, Icarus had started backing away from the blocked part of the cave. Lapis flexed her shoulder, before panels on her back opened to allow the characteristic backdraft of rockets to escape. Then, she moved, the rockets propelling her in a lightning fast shoulder charge that sent her on a collision with the cave-in. Tons of solid stone engaged in a contest of strength with an actual wearable Relic of the Gods, and promptly lost. It actually wasn't even a contest.

The rocks blocking the cave were forcibly converted to gravel, as Lapis sped through into a truly massive chamber beyond.

If the Beacon auditorium was uncommonly large, Noctis decided, this chamber was gargantuan. To compare this place to a lowly auditorium would be the same as comparing an Ursa the size of a car to a twenty storey tall Goliath. Braziers all around the chamber burned with an eerie blue light, which highlighted a _very_ serious problem.

The pulling sensation he had felt in the forest was now much, much stronger. It felt as if a Nevermore were trying to carry him off into the wind, inhumanly strong compared to the mundane force of gravity and promising only death in its wake. The chamber was made out of carved stone, constructed of angles that somehow hurt to look at. At one end of the space was the entrance they had gone through, and at the other end was a monument. There was no other way to describe it.

A massive statue, probably around the height of a forty storey tall office building, loomed over them. In its right hand was a hooked staff similar to those used by shepherds, and the body of the figure was garbed in a cloak black as night, with arms that seemed more like horizontal pillars wrapped in bracers of solid gold. The head of the statue was encased in an elaborate death mask in the style of the long dead Pharaohs, the iron fisted rulers who once governed the endless sands of Vacuo, gleaming with solid gold forged to form an emotionlessly grimacing homage to mortality.

The mouth and eye sockets of the statue were simply an abyss of darkness, from which no light could ever escape. The face of the mask itself was sunken in, the vaguely skeletal visage glaring at all who dared to trespass its hall. The monumental throne it rested on was carved out of an iridescent rock, very similar to onyx, that somehow simultaneously reflected light back into viewers' eyes and devoured it so hungrily that it left behind a veritable void in space.

At the foot of the statue was a solid gold sarcophagus, with its own, much more human, death mask, and on a plinth in front of the sarcophagus rested a book.

Carmine, first to snap out of the stupor that entering the burial chamber had imposed on them, raised her voice. "Team! Snap out of it! There are two relics inside, one for each pair here, so I say we grab them and get out of here. The feeling I get from this place is… concerning, to say the least."

They walked down the stairway, which slowly tapered outwards and downwards from the width of the corridor they had come from to the width of the entire tomb. Carmine reached for the book, picking it up before storing it in a satchel that she had slung over her shoulder, while Lapis reached over to the sarcophagus with a muttered "I'm sorry, but I have to do this" to the occupant. She lifted it up so that it stood upright, before pushing it to her back so that it magnetically locked to her armour. Just to be safe, she had Icarus help lash it on with rope.

The pulling feeling in Noctis's gut slowly started to die away, but before he did, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the silent flutter of wings.

What had they done?

/-/

"The last pair has been formed, sir," Glynda said, tapping the screen of her scroll to zoom in the footage. "Nora Valkyrie and Lie Ren. Poor boy... I can't possibly imagine those two getting along. Still, he's probably better off than Miss Nikos."

Ozpin grunted dismissively, staring closely at his own scroll.

"I don't care what his transcripts say. That Jaune fellow is not ready for this level of combat," she closed her own scroll, before continuing. "I guess we'll find out soon enough. At their current pace, they should have already reached the temple. Speaking of which, what did you use as relics this year?"

She was replied only with the sound of Ozpin muttering to himself.

"Professor Ozpin?" Glynda asked concernedly. She moved in to look over his shoulder, seeing two of the more esoteric pairs, Noctis Argent and Carmine Reinhardt, as well as Icarus Azure and Lapis Ferrum, in a massive chamber that was most definitely not the temple. "Hold on, that's not where we put the relics."

"That's the problem," he muttered in response. "To answer your question, Glynda, I used chess pieces from my personal set."

"Then what are they doing hauling off a coffin?" She exclaimed, perplexed.

"Are you familiar with the story of the warrior kings of Vale, and how the fall of their bloodline triggered the Great War?" He asked.

"Yes, I am."

"What we have here is the tomb of the very first king of that line. Right now, Lapis is having his sarcophagus strapped to her back. I actually didn't know his grave was right here in the Emerald Forest. Hold on… what's this?" He trailed off.

He zoomed in on the cover of the book Carmine held, letting the automatic real-time translation software of his device do the work for him. After a short loading time, the translated result appeared. Ozpin glanced down at his scroll, and ended up staring for a whole two minutes before his hands started to shake. "No, no no no no, it… can't be…" He muttered. Before that, however, Glynda managed to read the translation result.

It read; **[NECRONOMICON]**.

Eventually, the tremors in his hands caused the scroll to drop out of Ozpin's grasp. His knees collapsed underneath him, and Goodwitch swooped in to hook her arms underneath his, stopping him from falling flat on his back. Before he faded into unconsciousness, she heard him whisper "Why didn't I realise… it wasn't a one off after all, but a cycle… everything I did… all for nothing..." His head slumped down and his eyes rolled up into his head as he gave up the ghost.

The scroll's view seemed to move by itself, turning to look at and zoom into the inscriptions carved into the foot of the throne in which the statue sat at the end of the room.

It translated the top line first, which read; **[HERE LIES THE FIRST WARRIOR KING OF VALE, SPAWN OF THE CRAWLING CHAOS]**

Then the camera panned downwards, to read the second and last line.

It read; **[ALL HAIL THE BLACK PHARAOH, THE PRESENCE IN THE MOON, NYARLATHOTEP! MAY HE RULE REMNANT FOREVERMORE!]**

With that, the scroll shorted out with a billow of white smoke. All Glynda had to say was, "Well, crap."

She then began to gingerly drag Ozpin back to the Academy.

 **(Author's Notes: Well, looks like things have escalated ever so slightly, methinks. However, this might be the last chapter for a while, unless I can somehow pull out the last part of what I call the 'Wrong Board' arc. Wish me luck!)**


	8. Different Rules, Wrong Board

**(You'll notice that I retcon this chapter a lot. Deal with it; there's a lot of details here that may need to be changed as the story goes along.)**

 **(Trigger warning for a flashback to an attempted kidnapping. Be warned.)**

Ozpin poured the vintage whiskey into his coffee, before taking a hearty sip. Relishing the burn in his throat, he took a deep breath and sighed before opening his scroll. Apparently he had missed five calls from General Ironwood himself while he had taken his involuntary nap. Doctor Rouge, the director of Beacon's on-site medical wing and the proud owner of more PhDs than Ozpin had fingers, had personally implored him to rest overnight in his personal hospital suite, but he had refused out of fear that he might have missed something. Now he was regretting the decision. Relaxing in a comfortable hospital bed while being tended to by well-endowed nurses now seemed infinitely preferable to having to be stuck in his office and listening to his old student jabber on.

As he keyed in the hotline to Ironwood's office, he started to reflect on his decisions, namely the worst one he ever made. Laurence was his best student at Byrgenwerth, and when they had discovered the Old Blood so long ago, they had shared credit for the discovery.

Preliminary examination revealed that the blood held immense restorative properties, the closest thing to a panacea that had ever existed, and Laurence wanted to spread it out to the world. If he had been careful enough, if he had known what Laurence would do… all this madness would never have come to pass.

The breaking point, Ozpin figured, would have been the incident at the Fishing Hamlet. Gehrman and Maria had been there, the last time they would ever work with the Scholars. They had been forced to cut a bloody swathe through the village, and had retrieved their prize, the foetus of a Great One, but not without cost. He had assigned Maria afterwards to watch over the Research Hall, where the runes and arcane lifeforms they had discovered among the smouldering remnants of the village could be properly tested, but the rigours were too much for the Hunter.

They had used the invalid, those afflicted either physically, mentally or both, and perhaps the testing on humans was what drove her over the edge. Perhaps Maria was haunted by what she had done. Perhaps, in her frustration, she continued her experiments. Perhaps over time she became less and less compassionate with the patients, and more and more wracked with guilt. On one hand, her desire to uncover the truth behind the Great Ones could not be stopped, but on the other hand she genuinely cared for the patients of the Research Hall and did not want to see them suffer. She could see only one way out, and so she ended her own life. A shame.

Gehrman had entered a sort of self-induced exile upon her death, and had thus faded out of Willem's own affairs. It had been a stroke of sheer luck that one of them had returned to him in the form of Qrow Branwen, with Gehrman's memories imprinting themselves in Qrow's mind as unending nightmares. Those nightmares had frankly broken the man, who had turned to drink to quench his unending sorrow. Ozpin didn't care. He had one of his two enforcers back, and that was all that mattered.

Laurence had left Byrgenwerth to create what would eventually become the Healing Church, and taken the Old Blood, as well as the knowledge he held of the Labyrinth that held the tomb of the gods. He then saw it fit to distribute the Blood as both medicine and recreational usage, to both spread the curative properties of the miraculous substance and to addict the population so that they would indirectly fund his own research into the old gods. The rest, as they say, is history.

The call went through. Ironwood's familiar face appeared on the screen of Ozpin's device, partly shadowed by the peaked cap that he wore and almost entirely agitated. "Where were you?" He yelled. "I called to your emergency line, and it still took me five tries before you found the _gall_ to pick up!"

"My deepest apologies," Ozpin replied, "I have been… involuntarily invalidated, but only for a short time."

"What do you mean by 'involuntarily invalidated'?" Ironwood hollered.

Ozpin sighed. "I fainted, probably because I found out that there was a Necronomicon on my premises," he deadpanned, silently enjoying Ironwood's certainly adverse reaction to the mention of the occult tome. He had turned white as a sheet, and was now staring dumbfounded at him.

"A Necronomicon?" The General asked. "I thought we burned them all?"

Good. Now Ironwood was focusing on him, not the other way around.

"Apparently we didn't. There was one we missed, along with the tomb of the first ever recognised king of Vale. Said king was also the son of the Crawling Chaos, in case you were wondering."

Ironwood swore, before composing himself. "Rom is still alive, I hope?"

"Yes," Ozpin replied, glancing at the monitor installed to his desk that was connected to a camera in Byrgenwerth. The camera would be set to record constantly, never stopping, making sure of the Vacuous Spider's safety.

"Good. The Moon Presence can't act directly if she's still alive. Now, onto what I wanted to show you. You might want to activate that panoramic screen I helped install in your office last year, because a scroll won't allow you to really register how much shit has hit the fan," Ironwood growled.

Wow, Ozpin thought, this situation has really gotten him riled up. He flicked a switch on his desk, conveniently located next to the panic button, and a massive, concave screen, large enough to close off the entire front of his office, slid down from the ceiling. It was a security device and a viewing screen at the same time, the monitor being encased in tank-grade armour that should stand up to anything short of an artillery shell or a hostile Huntsman toting heavy ordnance.

"I hope you remember the Bloody Crow, Ozpin, because that's the same guy that turned up in Atlas today to offer his assistance to us," Ironwood explained. Ozpin's eyebrows raised in surprise. "Officially he's here to propose a military alliance with Atlas, what with the upcoming Vytal Festival and everything, but he alerted me beforehand as to the true reason why. The problem isn't with him, it's that he brought some guards of honour, and there seems to be some sort of culture shock as to what exactly defines a _honour guard_."

The screen flickered to life, revealing the massive open space that was Atlas's parade ground. Rather, it would have been open if it weren't for the fact that a literal army was covering every square metre of the place. A massive army of robots, although they could have been mistaken for men wearing armoured suits from afar, marched from the left of the screen to the right.

Each individual soldier was almost imperceptible in the mass, one human form seeming to meld into another, over and over again until the whole column of marching soldiers seemed to be moving as a single organism.

The sleek profiles of fighter aircraft roared above, two standard missiles and four larger radar-guided missiles on hardpoints on the wings while a soot-blackened muzzle port for an aircraft cannon of indeterminate calibre was visible from a housing to the right of the cockpit. A massive emitter for some kind of energy weapon - presumably Cainhurst's infamous tactical laser systems - was attached to a centreline housing on the underside of the aircraft.

"For us, a guard of honour is about eight to ten men at most. He brought an entire army, from the looks of it," Ozpin said resignedly, placing his open palm on his forehead.

Ironwood nodded in resigned assent. The recognition software he had installed was more successful, however, zooming in until it was able to isolate one specific soldier. A pop-up appeared, presenting one of the files that was contained in Carmine's thumb drive.

The soldiers seemed to be entirely robotic, marching along with bodies fashioned into what could be mistaken for a Stahlhelm-wearing army of people. Most of the rank-and-file wielded 5.45mm assault rifles with inbuilt retractable socket bayonets that were now stowed, but some had more armour than normal. They had either arm-mounted flamethrowers and automatic shotguns or just giant energy weapons of some sort connected to a massive armoured generator on their backs, and those with what appeared to be laser cannons even had pistols at their sides. There were more lightly armoured units with submachine guns in their hands and missile launchers on their backs.

Basically, the makings of a normal army - except for the fact that each of them had a transmitter that was connected to a central network. Basically, every single one of them recorded data that was processed by command, which then directed units as needed to respond in the most effective manner.

Ozpin hurriedly forwarded the file to Ironwood, emphasising the part about every single one being interlinked. It wouldn't do for an overzealous Atlesian soldier to take a potshot at one of the parading robots and thus start the second Great War, not at all. The column of soldiers then started to show gaps, gaps in which armoured vehicles had been almost rudely shoved.

The smaller tanks, apparently called Galahad-class Main Battle Tanks, that Ozpin saw were surprisingly smaller than the Challenger MBTs used by Atlas. It was much lighter, with a weight of 44.5 tons compared to the Challenger's 55 ton heft according to the stats provided to him, and its main gun - a smoothbore 125mm cannon - meant that it was most probably meant to act as a vanguard for the IFVs that would be carrying infantry. The gun had the expected APFSDS, HEAT-FS and HE-Frag-FS ammunition available to it, along with the rather unusual option of barrel-fired ATGMS.

However, it was actually worse than the venerable Challenger on a one-v-one basis due to having worse acceleration and a much lower top speed of 60kph as compared to the Challenger's own speed of 68kph, along with an absolutely _abysmal_ reverse speed of 3kph compared to the Challenger's own 31kph reverse speed, and it could not be ignored that it was comparatively much less able to take hits and keep on going. Despite possessing considerable armour on the turret and upper glacis, as well as sporting liberal application of ERA covering the turret and hull, it lacked the blow-out panels and ammo storage compartment in the back of the turret that would have allowed the force of exploding breached ammo to be vented out safely instead of blowing the turret off.

Furthermore, an autoloader built into the turret ring meant that, despite nullifying the need for a loader, any hits to the side of the tank or on the comparatively thinner lower frontal plate would detonate the ammo and send the turret flying out of its housing. It was probably a necessity due to the tank's autonomous nature, but there were certainly better places to fit an ammo storage compartment and an autoloader - Vale's own Guardian MBT was a rather fine example of that.

Still, the Galahad was a frankly deadly machine that no doubt had Ironwood fuming under his moustache. One 7.62mm machine gun coaxial to the main gun, as well as a 12.7mm machine gun mounted on top of the turret in a remotely operated installation next to the commander's hatch completed the remarkably compact and obviously cheap yet deadly package.

There were other tracked vehicles that rumbled by. They were hardly remarkable, but Ozpin noted them down anyway. There were IFVs armed with 30mm auto-cannons and an ATGM launcher on top of the turret as well as a single negligible coaxial 7.62mm machine gun. Then, SPAAG vehicles armed with dual twin-linked 30mm auto-cannons as well as eight short-range semi-active homing missiles - presumably for use against aircraft - in two by two squares of four mounted on the sides of the turret rolled past. These were presumably meant to defend the eight-wheeled self-propelled long-range radar-guided SAM systems - basically the heavy SAMs - that came up next, while following those were self-propelled howitzers armed with 152mm guns.

However, the next vehicles Ozpin saw rumbling onto the screen were beyond any possible reason. Apparently whoever designed these vehicles had a grudge against the manufacturer, and thus designed the largest tank he could dream of just to spite them with the difficulty of production.

The end result, designated as a Lancelot Super-Heavy Tank, had manifested as what could easily be described as a fortress of composite armour and enough ERA slapped on every conceivable surface to build a rather explosive house. A main turret housed a 152mm smoothbore main gun - more like upsized versions of the Galahad's main gun more than anything else, with a similar selection of ammunition barring the barrel-fired ATGMs - and a coaxial 30mm auto-cannon analogous to those mounted in the IFVs. Two sponsons mounted on the sides of the hull housed twin-linked emplacements of the same laser cannons being used by the heavy fire support infantry. A 120mm mortar poked out from next to another smaller turret mounted on the right side of the hull where another set of twin-linked laser cannons were mounted, while two more smaller turrets on top of the sponsons were literally SPAA turrets.

Almost amusingly, there was a single 14.5mm machine gun mounted on a remote-controlled installation, similar to the ones on the Galahad MBTs but bigger, mounted next to the commander's hatch. It was probably there just for posterity; to remove or ward off soldiers that were climbing onto the tank's superstructure with machine gun fire, or if the commander got bored of instructing a grand total of _six_ traversable gun emplacements and a mortar that would provide an invaluable source of indirect fire.

Ozpin counted the number of guns the thing had on his hands, coming to a grand total of fourteen guns if he counted every single barrel sticking out of the giant tracked mess, before sighing heavily.

He checked the schematics of the vehicle, and sure enough, at its maximum the veritable fortress on treads that was slowly but surely pulverising the solid concrete that was James's oh so prized parade ground had over a metre of nigh impenetrable sloped composite armour between anything vital inside and any hapless soul that just so happened to be shooting at it.

He tried to envision any sort of strategy that could have any chance of taking it out without significant and unacceptable collateral damage, and came up empty. The enemy would probably use a vehicle like this either as a breakthrough tank in an attack, a mobile fortress on the defensive side, or as a forward command base either way, and it would be too heavily defended anyways to exploit any possible weaknesses.

Ozpin hoped that Ironwood wouldn't be dumb enough to take such firepower at face value and attack the unknown quantity, but just in case he used his semblance to split the timeline into two. In timeline A, he explicitly told Ironwood to hold his fire and to spread the message to the Atlas Council. Ironwood might be annoyed that Ozpin was treating him like a dunce, but in actuality he was a dunce. The Council wasn't much better. In timeline B, he held his tongue and allowed his student to keep face.

Now he directed his attention to the next house-sized monstrosity that had popped up before him. This one was designated as an Arthur-class Super-Heavy Tank, and by god was it a big one at that. It had the same chassis as its brother vehicle, along with most of the secondary armaments carrying over, but with no other similarities.

Firstly, the hull-mounted mortar was gone. Secondly, the main turret was also gone. In fact, there _was_ no turret. Instead, there was a forward-set casemate extended upwards from the hull - presumably meant to house the largest goddamn gun that Ozpin had ever seen in his life. It was the kind of gun that one would point at something that absolutely _must_ die and must die _now_.

He brought up the power specifications that Carmine had provided, plugged the numbers into a simulation, and leant back in slowly dawning horror.

The monstrous cannon before him possessed the power to blow an Atlesian aerial battleship out of the sky with a single shot. It looked like he had been correct - this was the kind of weapon one used when something warranted being removed from the face of the planet.

When he took a closer look at what exactly the damn thing did in the first place to achieve such astounding statistics, he swore under his breath. Repeatedly, profusely and liberally. There was no ammunition to speak of, and Ozpin belatedly realised that the mortar had probably been removed to make space for fitting the obligatory capacitors in the armoured hull. Whereas normal cannons spat out explosive shells, this one fired an _obscenely_ powerful laser beam... and he could easily imagine the damage it would cause.

It was probably capable of penetrating through the ground down to the bedrock and leaving behind long gouges of fused earth. In urban environments, the scorching emissions would shiver tiles off roofs and shatter windows at their passing, and entire buildings would be cut down in one massive discharge of this weapon. Against lesser foes, the weapon would cause infantry to ignite and evaporate almost instantly - even the beam passing just a few meters overhead will sear the meat off the bone of exposed people nearby due to the sheer amount of thermal energy it carried - and it would also punch right through the armor of even the most heavily armoured vehicles, tearing them in two and disintegrating them with a single shot...

Truly... mankind had become death, the destroyer of worlds.

Eventually even those rolled past, and after a final column of robotic troops - which strangely included a _marching band_ of all things - the square was finally clear of movement. Every single unit that he had seen was now assembled on the square, in orderly groups of battalions. Then, at the front of it all, a familiar figure emerged out of a scarlet tear in space-time that had suddenly emerged. The humanoid monster before him gestured, the rift behind him closing, before he stopped as if waiting for some kind of cue.

What Ozpin thought were fighters, which up to now have been doing flyovers over the parading army, seemed to transform in mid-air and reveal themselves to be flight suits. These were called Nidhogg Flight Units, controlled by what appeared to be android pilots. Their arms and legs fit into sockets in the inner chassis of the flight units, seemingly controlling two robotic arms and legs that otherwise looked normal. Rails on extendable arms - they were currently on back-mounted housings, but could extend to over the shoulders for missile launch - housed two missiles that were ready for use, with reloads in internal bays in the back. Mounted on the top of the left arm, rather like a shield, was the tactical laser system's module.

At that, Ozpin rolled his eyes and smiled. Looks like their enigmatic adversary had done their research... of course the Bloody Crow of Cainhurst had decided to go for the dramatic entrance, if only to show off both his own deceptively dangerous wings and the technological marvels that were his transforming fighter jets. James would have given his remaining arm for the privilege of integrating them into the Atlesian Navy, and Ozpin knew full well why the Knight was showing off his armoury to the General. He wanted to entice James into supporting whatever it was that he wanted, and Ozpin only hoped that it was compatible to their own aims.

Two fighters in particular were decorated differently than their compatriots. Where most of the Nidhoggs were painted almost entirely grey, one of them was painted almost entirely the same except for their right wing, which was painted a blood red. The other had blue stripes on its wings that tapered outwards to cover the entirety of the structures. They seemed to transform mid-air in perfect sync, landing on the feet of their flight units in a perfectly coordinated manner. Not too hard that they would actually damage something important in their own mechanisms, but hard enough to kick up any lingering dust with a loud thunk of metal and further crush the much abused concrete of the parade ground.

They flanked the Bloody Crow, and already Ozpin noticed something different about these two pilots. Instead of being inhuman metal skeletons as their compatriots had been, they looked… human, for a lack of a better term. They wore full body flight suits with helmets that were rather like those worn by Atlas's human soldiers that obscured anything from the mouth up.

The pilot of the red-winged fighter was a girl, made clear by the white and red flight suit she wore that was unzipped just so to present just a hint of cleavage behind a white blouse, as well as her visibly ladylike jawline and the long blonde hair that dangled from her eyeless helmet. A devilish smile played out on her face, accented by the form-fitting figure of her outfit, and Ozpin could easily deduce that this was indeed Pixy, half of Galm Team.

The other half of Galm Team, Cipher, was a boy more decorously dressed in a fully zipped up blue and white flight suit along with an armoured vest. His expression was the definition of stoicism, carefully neutral but still betraying a hint of his good mood. So this was Galm Team. Pixy and Cipher, Cainhurst's twin answers to Penny. It would be interesting to see how they would interact during the Vytal Festival, Ozpin mused.

He then started to walk towards Ironwood, and that was where, in timeline B, the situation got out of control very fast. In that timeline, he raised his right wing as if to block something, and sure enough Ozpin glimpsed something glance off the black feathers. From Ironwood's shocked look, he gathered that he had not authorised the usage of a sniper, and that it was one of the council members who had ordered the hit.

"So the eminent general does not waste his time, hm? Cipher, eliminate the interloper," the Knight rumbled. A faint smile broke out on the android's face the blue and white of Cipher's flight unit launched itself into the sky in a blur of colour.

The camera panned to the right, zooming into the sight of a weedy young man, almost a boy, backing away from Cipher on a nearby rooftop. The hoodie wearing man, who couldn't have been older than nineteen, desperately tried to scramble away from the grim-faced pilot before him. He raised the scoped rifle he had presumably been given, and emptied the entire magazine into the exposed pilot's housing. Rather, he would have if a barely perceptible energy shield almost trivially stopped the bullets in their tracks. Cipher seemed nonplussed for a second, and Ozpin could swear that he was raising his eyebrow under his helmet. He smiled, something on his flight unit's left shoulder beginning to transform.

There was no other way to describe it. The beginnings of a barrel and a firing system emerged from a casemate in the left shoulder blade of the unit, attached to a moving arm on a rail on the unit's back, before being connected to an ammo belt and finally encased in a shell of armour plating. As the 30mm cannon within audibly span up while it was raised towards its target, that same shell of heavily tinted bulletproof glass fighter mode's cockpit slid shut over Cipher's body like a clam.

The cannon fired for barely a second, but even that was enough to obliterate the boy's centre of mass. Cipher's flight unit reached down with its free hand, grasping the head of the boy which had been blown off by an explosive shell before bringing it up to where Cipher's eye level presumably was under the casing of tinted armoured glass that was his cockpit. Ozpin got the impression that he was staring at it.

"I-I can explain, but _please_ stand down," Ironwood stammered, trying to defuse the situation but failing. He winced as chunks of the hoodie-wearing assassin's cadaver slowly slid off of the roof before falling into a melange of fresh blood and offal with a wet plop. "We don't want to fight."

Regardless, every single heavy weapon that could point at Ironwood turned to do so. Soon, James and the camera that he had put on the podium for Ozpin's benefit were staring at more gun barrels than either of them could count.

The Bloody Crow chuckled. "Convince me, then. A sniper trying to kill me speaks poorly of your manners." Then, he flicked his hand at them almost dismissively. "No matter. Learning is a painful process at best. Cipher, finish him."

Cipher's flight unit transformed back into its fighter jet form, arcing straight up into the air. After reaching a considerable height, it levelled put before looping around towards Ironwood. Two missiles zipped off of the hardpoints on the wingtips, and Ozpin observed the distinctive profile of two standard missiles in the remaining microseconds before the explosion destroyed the cameras and cut off his feed.

He checked the list of implant signals on his scroll.

Each person he let into his inner circle had to be implanted with a transmitter that monitored both their lifesigns and their current location. The list had been his lifeline in more desperate situations, and it looked like it would have to adopt that same role again.

He scrolled down the list, idly noting that Raven was currently camped out in a large forest in Mistral. Taiyang and Qrow were in Patch and Signal Academy respectively, as usual. A sigh of dismay left him as he passed by Summer's data, or lack thereof. Her location was displayed simply as 'Error,' and her lifesigns were represented by just a constant, flat line. However, her implant had not registered as having been destroyed, so there was still some sliver of hope.

Ironwood's data, on the other hand, displayed his last known location, the middle of Atlas, and nothing else. The implant had already registered as having been destroyed, and showed the corresponding data. Ozpin sighed. The glorified altar choir that was the Atlesian Council had gotten Ironwood killed. Well, this wasn't the first time that this had happened, and this was by far one of the better possible outcomes for his ex-student.

In Yharnam, he had been transformed into a perpetually burning beast that screamed about as much as a high-class whore at work, at least until the Good Hunter had ended his torment.

He honestly felt that Laurence deserved such an end; he had burned down an entire city to cover up the detrimental results of his experiment on Old Yharnam, and in Ozpin's opinion, being wreathed in the flames of penance for all eternity was a most fitting punishment.

The only redeeming point that those punishing flames had was that they burned both Laurence and anyone he was fighting with, massively boosting the combat capabilities of someone like Ironwood. However, it looked like being able to engage in literally flaming fistfights didn't save him this time.

Thankful for the alternate timeline his semblance afforded him, he kept timeline B open for a little while longer to see what would happen.

It just so happened that he wasn't disappointed, with what looked like a hole of red light opening up in reality before another Arthur rumbled out of it and then promptly tore up the gardens of the Academy grounds. The super heavy tank's massive Excalibur cannon tilted upwards, pointing directly at his office before it fired and caused Ozpin's world to dissolve into searing heat and blinding white light.

 **[TIMELINE B TERMINATED. TIMELINE A STILL ACTIVE.]**

Timeline B cut out, leaving him both somewhat shell-shocked and with the much better timeline A. The Bloody Crow was now shaking hands with Ironwood, and Ozpin used the opportunity to split the timeline again, just in case.

 **[TIMELINE B REESTABLISHED.]**

He drained the whiskey-coffee mixture that remained in his mug, then refilled it with just the whiskey. He felt that he would probably need it at the end of all of this.

The screen began to retract itself into the ceiling, as Ironwood had disconnected the camera mere moments before. Ozpin reset his scroll to the conference call mode that he had been using originally, and waited. He opened the left armrest of his chair, pulling out a small touchscreen monitor that he swivelled on its gondola arm to put it in front of him, and turned it on to a view of the Council Chamber of Atlas.

He neglected to turn on the audio, however, as what the council members _said_ simply did not matter. It was what they would do that mattered. Even if they all unanimously denied Cainhurst's offer of alliance, all it would take was for him and Ironwood to persuade them to change their verdicts.

No one was truly loyal, Ozpin knew, it just took different kinds and degrees of persuasion to get them to turn. All it took was knowing what buttons to press, and at what time they should be pressed. His world-spanning network was Ozpin's magnum opus, even eclipsing the Scholars of Byrgenwerth.

Through a combination of controlling the world economy, paying off high-ranking members of every government in Remnant barring Menagerie, having every politician worth a damn owing favours to them, using both the armed forces of Atlas and the Legion as proxies, and Ozpin's use of both hired mercenaries and his own students - both current and former - as enforcers, he essentially controlled Remnant from the shadows.

Of course, it wasn't total control, and they still gave the individual kingdoms leeway over the majority of their own internal management, but when things got serious, his would start throwing their weight around. After all, the hand of God acts benevolently to guide the little to new heights. If a few got crushed under the weight like ants, at least the majority of them would benefit.

It appeared that most of the council supported the proposed alliance, but some hardliner nationalists among them had not. No matter. Ozpin just so happened to know that the most prominent of them, around whom the rest of them clustered, had a daughter that he loved very much… maybe something happening there would put him back in line.

He will get an unanimous approval verdict by the end of the week _at most_. Regardless, that was nothing but a sideshow. As soon as James managed to bring the Bloody Crow into his private office and lock it down, the real conversation would begin.

The Bloody Crow was hardly trustworthy, but he might be able to provide the only source of non-Atlas dependent arms at their disposal. They had no way of compensating if James lost his position as General, as that would lose them both the considerable asset that was Atlas's armed forces and any possible control they had over the Legion. The two Centurions the Legion had from Atlas were their only way that Ozpin had for contacting the mysterious Praetorian, and if Ironwood lost his power they would _immediately_ turn on him.

He and Ironwood had had to pay an arm and a leg just to establish long term communications with them, and during their correspondence, the two lieutenants had made it obvious that whatever his men did to try and win them over, they would still stay overwhelmingly loyal to the Legion.

In other words, if he lost Ironwood or if Ironwood lost his post, they essentially became as powerless as they had been all those years ago. Ozpin _hated_ being powerless.

Ozpin sighed, closing his eyes and trying to focus on the soft sound of clanking gears over his head like a man in prayer. Just a few years ago, he had been hedging his bets on team STRQ for his enforcers, but when he began to put in the personal touch the whole thing fell apart.

His attempts to use Taiyang as the first ever male host for a Maiden has failed. Sure, he got powers remarkably similar to that of the Fall Maiden, but the Maiden's actual powers had not transferred over, his semblance instead growing in strength to block it out. The fact that the previous Atlesian general and his previous shell had been incinerated in the process only added more salt in the wound. From what he had seen, his new semblance seemed to be genetic in nature, with his daughter obtaining a clone of his own abilities, rather like the glyphs of the Schnee family.

However, Taiyang could not be trusted with the secret of Ozpin's true extent of power. He was too social, too amicable and too prone to letting his mouth run. As for other candidates... Summer, despite the overwhelming power she possessed, had seemingly fallen to the wiles of the Vilebloods, as many had done before her.

Every one of the Old Hunters persisted in some manner or another, Ozpin noted.

Some, like him, merely gained the memories, experiences and skills of their past personas as extra baggage. Others, like Qrow and Ironwood, have their past personas live on in their minds as separate personalities, unable to do anything concrete other than poke and prod at their mental cages. However, they did pass down the skills they had in life to his captors. Gehrman's current residence, one Qrow Branwen, has proved to be a most reliable enforcer of his will on Remnant.

However, Summer's passenger, Ludwig, had been unique. He had appeared to his vessel as a fully human, external projection that only Summer could perceive, and not only did the Holy Blade bestow his formidable skills and experience upon the young woman, he had also handed down his own weapon, the Holy Moonlight Sword.

Summer had also shown abilities tying her to the cosmos, such as the Augur of Ebrietas, the Blacksky Eye, and most importantly, she had the capacity to perform A Call Beyond. Unleashing the alternate form of the Holy Moonlight Sword, a massive blade of ethereal hardlight, and knowing how to hurl the shadowy light waves that were the signature move of the leader of the Church Hunters.

Ozpin still fondly remembered the first Vytal Tournament she and her team had fought in. Qrow and Raven had been the highly skilled, highly mobile hammer to the anvil that was Taiyang and Summer, and some of the moves that the latter two had still stood as records for the most destructive moves ever performed in the arena.

Taiyang has been a living inferno of rage, either swinging the shorter one-handed form of his axe and blasting away with his sawn-off shotgun, or trying to cut his opponents in half with the lengthened two-handed form. Summer, on the other hand, simply had to raise her hands and summon a rain of nascent stars to wipe anything in her general vicinity entirely off the map. Losing someone that powerful to apparent limbo had been a major loss.

Raven's refusal to work with him had all but sealed the fate of his plans for team STRQ in the end, with only Qrow continuing to work for him. They had been his veritable Huginn and Muninn, thought and memory. Raven, his Huginn, had fled the nest, leaving Qrow, his Muninn, to stay at his side. He had memory, but not thought. Ozpin raised his whiskey filled mug to his lips and drained it in one go.

His scroll flickered, and Ozpin accepted the call. One small window in the corner of the screen held the face of Ironwood, while the main bulk of the screen held the faceless helmeted visage of the Bloody Crow.

"Let me get to the point of this. We both have the same objective, Willem," the Bloody Crow said. "We both want to see the last of the old gods die away, for the good of both our people. Although it pains me to have to work with those who sought our downfall so long ago, my Queen has decreed that I shall ally with you. This is reason enough for me to join you, as you should have known from the dossier I had Carmine give you."

On one hand, if this was successful, the Bloody Crow would become a major asset to the God Hand. On the other hand, if the recruitment failed, he would potentially leave behind something too unpredictable and dangerous to be left unchecked coupled with the fact that he had no actual way of checking it. The flimsy excuse he gave for joining was better than nothing, so he agreed in timeline A.

In timeline B, though, he just cut off the Bloody Crow's call. Again, the super heavy tank materialised in the academy ground, and again his office was introduced to a laser designed to kill Atlesian aerial battleships with a single decisive shot.

Timeline B mercifully cut itself off.

 **[TIMELINE B TERMINATED. TIMELINE A STILL ACTIVE.]**

"However," the Bloody Crow continued. "I cannot tolerate a foreign, unaffiliated entity of the same caliber as your God Hand. The risk is too high, and I understand that you desire the same. To put it simply, you are either with me or against me."

Ozpin sighed. Did he have any other chance? "Fine. We'll employ you on a trial basis for now, and when the need arises that Cainhurst's armada needs to be used, we shall see how you deal with it." He conceded. "I understand that your Queen is physically… incapacitated. Here's my deal. If you join me, I'll see what I can do to help in that regard. Alright?"

"Since you put it so nicely…" The Bloody Crow hesitated for a bit, before sealing the deal. "Okay. We shall see what I can do to help." With that, the call ended.

Ozpin put his head in his hands, and let loose a stream of curses. First he had found a bloody Necronomicon on the Academy grounds, and now he had a rogue military power that could handily beat Atlas at its own game. And here he had thought that the Fall Maiden being injured so badly that they had had to place her in a life support pod and scramble for another candidate was bad.

They were truly in deep shit now, as Taiyang would have put it. Oh, how he now missed the brute's simplicity of thought.

The worst thing was that he could do practically nothing. Necronomicons seemed to subconsciously influence their readers in some way, and if any external party tried to remove the book from its owner, the owner would invariably become so desperate to keep the book that they would use its contents to summon something unspeakable. So unless he wanted a rogue shoggoth running rampant in his school, he had better tread carefully.

Cainhurst could not be crushed by brute force, because they were probably several orders of magnitude more powerful than any forces he could bring to bear as well as the inconvenient fact that the Bloody Crow seemed to have inside knowledge both of him and of his vassals. If he went on the offensive against the Knight, he would probably reveal the existence of the his hand to the world.

That would be bad, to put it lightly. Remnant treasured freedom of choice above all, and that extended to the freedom to govern themselves. If they found out that some previously unknown organisation was controlling them from the shadows, there would be an outburst of negative emotion worldwide, inevitably drawing in enough Grimm to wipe humanity off the map.

Ozpin reestablished the alternate timeline.

 **[TIMELINE B REESTABLISHED.]**

He angrily snatched up the whiskey bottle and turned it over to pour himself some whiskey, but only a slight dribble fell out. Had he really finished the whole bottle? He filled the mug the rest of the way up with coffee. Before he could drink it, however, the elevator to his office dinged, and Glynda stepped out. "Professor Ozpin? Are you feeling better?"

"Yes. I should be fine now," he replied calmly in timeline A.

In timeline B, he let the alcohol and the frustration take control, pulling out the .45 pistol that James had so kindly given to him as a gift from its place in a drawer in his desk. Before the deputy headmistress could react, he raised it and emptied the entire magazine of seven rounds into her head. A dead body crumpled to the ground, staining Ozpin's marble flooring with blood and clumps of brain matter.

People often wondered how he stayed so calm even at the worst news, and the answer was that he didn't. In one timeline he would appear nonchalant to the point of being cold, while he would redirect all his anger to the other timeline to properly vent it. No matter.

He closed timeline B.

 **[TIMELINE B SHUT DOWN.]**

"Well, I just came up here to tell you that the team naming ceremony is starting soon, so if you're feeling well enough to attend then I would highly recommend coming down as soon as you can, sir."

Right. The team naming ceremony. He looked down at his scroll, seeing the list of students grouped into their teams. All he had to do was assign a leader and give them an appropriate acronym name. Thankfully it seemed that every team formed was easy enough to name, and Ozpin already knew who he wanted to name as leader. If only the bigger picture was that easy.

A dying Maiden in his care, her power threatening to fall into the hands of Salem. An occult tome that could possibly destroy everything he had worked towards, and he could not do anything against it. The appearance of a new, overwhelmingly powerful yet unpredictable and enigmatic, faction. All the makings of a perfect storm.

"What is your plan, old friend?" he wondered, before shaking his head. Mulling over it wouldn't do him any good, no, he actually had to stop it before it ballooned out of control. His zeal for knowledge had doomed Yharnam eons ago, and now Remnant loomed over the abyss. He would fix this damage, he decided, because he was the only one that could.

Millennia ago, he had sat in a similar chair in a lunarium, overlooking a moonlit lake. First he had sat there to ponder the differences between humanity and the old gods as well as how to elevate one's mind to that of the Great Ones with eyes on the inside, then after the disaster with Rom he had sat there paralysed by the cosmic fungus slowly consuming him from the inside out. Luckily the Good Hunter had put his misery to an end, otherwise he could have simply become a sort of eldritch tree and that could have been the end of it. But fate had had other ideas.

Willem had passed on to become Ozma. Ozma, after making possibly the biggest mistakes of his life, had eventually become Ozpin. Behind him lay a path of death, destruction and sorrow. Other points of interest included a failed attempt as Willem to create an old god that basically screwed Yharnam and in extension Remnant for all eternity, infatuating a girl trapped in a tower as Ozma to the point that she literally tried to deal with the Crawling Chaos to try and bring him back from a rare natural death, posing as false gods with said girl also as Ozma and vaporising their four children in a massive martial fight, and now engaging in a not-quite war with his ex-wife as Ozpin. The body count was rapidly ticking up, and the sad part? This war was the calm before the storm.

 **[TIMELINE B REESTABLISHED.]**

He got up to leave. He had teams to create, bonds to form and dreams to shatter. Like he did for the Vacuous Rom so long ago, he needed to grant them eyes.

/-/

"Jaune Arc. Lie Ren. Pyrrha Nikos. Nora Valkyrie. The four of you retrieved the white rook pieces. From this day forward, you will work together as Team JNPR," Ozpin announced. Noctis's eye twitched. The thought of his sister with that _boy_ was not a welcome one. With the way she had become infatuated with Jaune, he would happily bet his life savings on the chance that he would end up having to officiate their marriage.

The rest of the journey had gone relatively well, besides the fact that they had realised that they were supposed to go to the _other_ temple, the one they had passed off as a decoy. The look on Pyrrha's face when she found out that he had completely misinterpreted what exactly constituted a relic was particularly memorable. Overthinking things much?

Chess pieces… and here they were hauling around a damn sarcophagus. No wonder everyone had looked at them weird. Well, at least they had managed to clinch two pawns, one black and one white.

The only problem they had had was when JNPR was fighting the giant Deathstalker, and an Ariadne battery had decided to shell the bridge they were fighting on. Noctis had been forced to clone himself and drop a whole belt of cloned napalm grenades under the battery, subjecting himself to the backlash that he felt whenever his clone died before the connection wore off by itself. Even now his head still felt like it was going to split in half, but never mind that.

He stole a glance at the newly minted team RWBY, smirking as he did. Ruby looked utterly terrified at her new responsibility, and Noctis could understand. The responsibility of managing three other people for four entire years was a daunting prospect, to say the least. What he could not understand was why Weiss looked so dismayed. Sure, she envisioned herself to be the perfect leader in her mind, but wasn't it said that the people who least deserved power were the ones who desired it?

"Takes after her mother, doesn't she?" Noctsremarked, whispering to Icarus.

Icarus glared daggers at Noctis in response, but remained silent.

"What? You have a crush on her or something? I know Vomit Boy does," he snarked.

Icarus just started to grind his teeth in frustration.

"Alright, I'll shut up now," he ended lamely.

"And finally; Noctis Argent, Icarus Azure, Carmine Rienhardt and Lapis Ferrum. The four of you retrieved one black and one white pawn. More importantly, you also retrieved an ancient coffin larger than my desk which shall certainly be examined most thoroughly by our History professor, Dr. Bartholomew," the headmaster smiled good-naturedly while some chuckles sprang out of the crowd. "From this day forward, you will work together as Team NICL."

For some reason, Noctis's stomach started to churn. He suddenly started to feel nervous, his heart jackhammering in his chest in anticipation of _something_. "Led by…" Ozpin trailed off. "Noctis Argent!"

His eyes widened in utter shock. The ramifications of the decision crashed down upon his shoulders. He would be responsible for any major decision that his team would make for as long as they attended Beacon, and even after that. He would be responsible if they lived or died…

 _One day, Pyrrha didn't come home. They first assumed that she was going to be late for dinner, and so they had saved a portion of roast duck and rice for her. Their father was off working somewhere in Remnant - a life as a Huntsman was a very busy life indeed - but their mother, at least, was a civilian. She worked a nine-to-five job, provided for them, cared for them and generally did her duty and beyond as a mother._

 _When he came to live with them more than a decade ago, somehow, there had been an unspoken agreement between them. To make sure that his sister, and her daughter, was always happy and healthy. Even now, in Argus, that agreement still stood._

 _The late evening turned into a sleepless night, and then into an early morning rife with desperation. She wasn't just late; she had disappeared entirely. They suspected the worst - kidnapping. There hadn't been a ransom demand, so their main objective was the currently missing young woman. The possibilities were... distressing, to say the least. But who could possibly kidnap somebody as formidable as Pyrrha Nikos, the Invincible Girl? Their mother had made a police report then, worried to the point of tears, and the police started the creation of a missing persons file._

 _And as for himself? Well, he went hunting. Donning the laser rifle and the backpack capacitor, the greatcoat and the gas mask with the skull-visaged faceplate, he went out into the world with one objective. A singular yet two-pronged aim, the definitive purpose of his life which he would achieve or die._

 _The cold, icy rage in his gut was comforting. The red haze overtaking the field of his vision, the mind-numbing wrath that had consumed his mind, they all reassured him that he at least was not powerless._

 _Their mother was the benevolent aegis, sheltering them with the unconditional love and care of the parent. However, despite the fact that their mother was a strong contender for the strongest woman that he had ever seen, she was still a civilian._

 _He on the other hand was the sword to his mother's shield, though both worked in concert to protect Pyrrha. His love for his sister was the love of the guardian, an almost religious devotion that some would characterise as borderline fanaticism. His love was the kind_ _fashioned to precise order and pattern, a pattern to which loyalty and discipline, duty and unflinching devotion goes deeper than blood and bone, deeper than conscious thought or unconscious desire. If she desired friendship, he would be an inseparable companion. If she needed assistance, he would deliver to the best of his ability. If she needed help, if she required rescuing like she did now, she would find in him a most implacable saviour - even if it cost him his life in exchange._

 _If anybody dared to hurt her, the world would find that he could very easily play the role of a relentless killer._

 _Now? All of his facilities, every single thought and action, with inhuman focus, was directed to one primary objective:_ _Find and retrieve his sister. Eliminate the persons responsible for the crime... all of them._

 _Every. Single. Fucking. One._

 _On that day, Argus **burned**..._

In the present, he just stood there, catatonic, insensate to the world. The applause roared into his ears, assaulting his eardrums like the shrieks of the dying. Lapis pat him on the back good-naturedly, while Icarus shook his hand firmly. Carmine raised her helmet's visor and saluted him.

It was a dream come true, except that it was _someone else's dream._ He looked around in abject denial, desperately hoping that someone would come over and tell him that this was some sort of elaborate joke. However, nobody came. It was a good thing he was wearing a mask, because right now, he was already starting to tear up.

He grit his teeth and grimaced, his hands clenched. His breath started to break up into great, heaving sobs.

Now, there were even more people to worry about. Somewhere, somehow, he felt _something_ laughing at him. The entire situation stank of bitter irony, after all.

/-/

Roman was, to put it simply, absolutely terrified. He knew Cinder was bad news the moment he saw her, but this was on an entire other plane of existence of bad news.

Standing behind the Troupe Master himself was an experience he would wish on no one ever. All because he told Cinder that he would require reinforcements for their plan… he should have kept his damn mouth shut. They stood in an abandoned warehouse, a cold draft blowing in through the broken windows and causing Grimm's seemingly tattered cape to flutter in the wind.

A particularly strong gust of air blew his bowler hat off his head, and he moved to grab it before an impossibly slender, clawed hand shot out of Grimm's cloak to pick it out of the air.

" _I believe this is yours,"_ the universally feared creature before him said, in a raspy yet cultured voice that would not have sounded out of place from a human. He stared for a bit, before hesitantly taking back his bowler hat.

" _My human liaison has informed me that you require reinforcements,"_ Grimm noted.

Before thinking about what he was about to say, Roman blurted out "I believe what I said was 'We're gonna need more men'. Whatever this is probably isn't gonna be a bunch of goons."

He stopped, rapidly going pale and stepping away from Grimm, who had started to look at him.

" _Normally you humans seem to lack the spine to address me like that…_ " The Troupe Master idly noted, before pausing. Roman cringed, preparing to run for his life before realising that it would be useless. " _No matter. It's refreshing, speaking to someone as a equal instead of them pleading for their life or something of the like_."

Roman sighed in relief, tension visibly draining out of him, before asking "What kind of reinforcements should I be expecting? Ariadnes? Nevermores? The motherfucking Horseman itself, still smouldering from the sacking of Valhalla?"

" _The best kind,_ " Grimm replied, before snapping his fingers. All of a sudden, a fiery pentagram sprang to life on the cold concrete before them, threatening to fill the entire room before a ring of fire curbed its growth. " _The kind that shatters any resistance, like a biblical flood smashing into a straw hut. You asked for men, and I have deemed them inadequate. The flesh of man is weak, but the hide and sinew of Grimm? Biological perfection. So much raw potential, but unfortunately not realised most of the time, squandered away on mere minions_."

The pentagram burned ever brighter and larger, slowly becoming a massive circle of fire that roared up to the sky. Roman knew the roar of fire better than anyone, having started out a budding arsonist and cat burglar, so why did it sound like something was roaring _in_ the fire?

" _I have, instead, deemed it appropriate to lend you the assistance of my Troupe. Interpret that how you will_."

Before Roman could reply to the increasingly ominous monologue, two massive claws, connected to blood red wings, burst out of the flame. They dug into the rim of the fiery portal before him, pulling up a massive draconian body that was terrifyingly familiar to Roman. Six scarlet eyes, the gaze of a primordial demon reborn, bored into his insignificant human form as the Wyrm drew itself up to its full height before they moved on to look at its master, seemingly wondering what to do.

Grimm turned to him, and said, " _My Wyrm is yours to command, for now. I can confidently say that with a being such as this under your direction, even a place as heavily defended as Beacon shall fall. Indeed, all shall fall before it. You humans certainly have tried, but I believe that most of those brave souls are now in eternal rest_."

Roman simply stared in shock at the massive dragon before him. The Wyrm had killed thousands upon thousands of people, he knew that at least, but now that Grimm had handed him the reins? He had absolutely no idea what to do with this. He had absolutely no fucking idea what to do. Roman's cigar dropped out of his mouth to snub itself out on the cold concrete below.

Troupe Master Grimm, the psychotic fuck, started to laugh softly. " _There, there, my little dapper man. I do trust that he'll be well behaved. He's even been toilet trained… I think. Anyway, good luck. Cinder shall be giving me regular updates, but I do hope you'll take care of my little Wyrm_."

He then disappeared in a puff of smoke. It would have been slightly amusing if he had not dumped his demented metaphor of a housecat onto Roman's lap not even a minute prior.

Neo appeared at his side, pointing at the dragon now filling up most of the warehouse before staring blankly yet accusingly at Roman.

"I have no fucking idea what just happened, and I have no fucking idea what to do next," he muttered, staring at the clusterfuck that had materialised in front of him.

The Wyrm seemed to be idly sniffing the walls of the warehouse almost like a puppy would, which could have been slightly cute if not for the fact that black flames puffed out of its nose every time it exhaled and charred the concrete to a pitch black.

"Tell the boys that we are officially dragon-sitting for the Troupe themselves, and that they are gladly allowed, if not encouraged, to take sick days off," Roman said, running his hands through his hair. "In all honesty, I'm not blaming them even if they leave entirely. The damn thing's not even potty trained."

Neo raised her eyebrow, as if to ask why it was here in the first place.

"This was gonna be our ace in the hole for that job Cinder set us up for. You know, attacking Beacon Academy. The sort of suicide mission that just so requires this giant draconic embodiment of bloodshed. Problem is…" Roman dropped off. "This ace might just burn everything else we care about along with the job. It's made the whole hand useless, but we can't fold now," he said with a sigh.

"I hate this," Roman seethed, while Neo nodded in assent with her own grim expression. "I hate _everything_ about this. I hate the fact that we've been asked to kill a bunch of _kids_ for some fucking reason, I hate the fact that we're now working with the motherfucking Grimm Troupe of all things, and I hate the fact that we can't do anything to stop shit from hitting the fan. One step out of line and we're screwed, but maybe… maybe someone else can stop this. Before we get hurt."

The Grimm Dragon reared up and roared into the cold Vale night, as if to crush their hopes.

 _The reaper will not be denied_.

 **(Author's Notes: You'll be able to understand the first part easier if you've ever watched a Russian Victory Day parade. I actually had to rewrite this chapter somewhat as I wasn't satisfied with the first version, but due to deadlines and shit I had to upload it as is so that I could make some progress. The new version has less infodump, more opportunities for me to add characters, and more character dialogue. Enjoy.)**


	9. New Friends, New Enemies

The first few days of his career as a Huntsman went just how any other period of time at school would have been, Noctis felt. Waking up in a room with three other people had been surprising, as was the fact that his partner had been hiding a secret of her own. A small robot, stripped open and seemingly in the midst of repair, had been attached to the complementary computer in their room, and when he had inquired, it turned out that that robot was her 'pod'. Pods were essentially armed AI companions that carried diagnostic instruments such as radar, scanners, EMP jammers and advanced hacking tools just to name a few, as well as mounting heavy ranged weapons. Apparently her pod had gotten overloaded by an external attack, and thus she was now trying to repair it. So far nothing out of the ordinary.

No, he had no problem with that. The thing he had a problem with was that she had transferred the central AI, which she had somehow named GEMINI, into their room's computer. So far she had been able to contain it within numerous firewalls the complexity of which baffled Noctis entirely. However, she had told him that it would only be a matter of time before GEMINI started to bleed into the school's central server. Well, they would cross that bridge when they came to it.

He had probably taken the implications of a potentially hostile AI presence in the entire school way too lightly. He sighed under his breath. Never mind about that now, he wanted to eat his food in peace. Weiss was preoccupied with polishing her nails, apparently, while Carmine had absconded to continue repairing GEMINI.

Nora was talking about this dream about her and Ren apparently surrounded by dozens of Ursas, which was technically impossible, owing to the fact that Ursas never appeared alone. They always turned up as meat shields to divert damage away from their smaller Beowolf compatriots. Amusingly, Ren continually contradicted her, clarifying that instead of in the middle of the night, it was actually in broad daylight. The supposed dozens of Ursas were replaced by only a measly two.

Noctis smiled good-naturedly, instead looking sympathetically at a despondent Jaune. Cardin has managed to beat Jaune into a pulp with his mace earlier this morning, but nothing could have compared to Carmine's beatdown of the poor guy in front of him. Apparently her and Jaune's ancestors had had a major conflict more than a millennia ago, and social isolation on the part of the Rienhardt family had only perpetuated the feud.

What he had understood was that the Rienhardt line, which used to call themselves Vilebloods back in the day, had ruled a small kingdom called Cainhurst. However, the hyper-religious entity that Remnant had been at the time essentially sent down a crusade upon them. Castle Cainhurst was put under siege, and fell, with almost the entire Vileblood line destroyed. Then, discovering that the ruling monarch of the time, Queen Annalise, was effectively immortal in the same way that her descendant Carmine was, the leader of the besieging party, Martyr Logarius, sealed himself in with the Queen and thus locked the entirety of Castle Cainhurst in stasis.

The real issue between the two families cropped up when a rogue Executioner, for that was what the paladins of the crusade called themselves, broke the seal. He ended his master's miserable life, finally martyring him properly, and then proceeded to smash the vulnerable Queen into paste. The crazed zealot had revealed his name in his dying breath, killed by one of the Queen's loyal knights, but the damage was done. The Queen had been destroyed so utterly that even her own immense abilities were not enough. Hurriedly, they had assembled a life-support throne, a technological marvel that was still not enough to bring her back fully.

Now, she lived as a lifeless corpse on a throne, permanently stuck on the threshold between life and death. Her remaining subjects had declared their undying enmity to the Arc line, and had vowed to take their revenge. A millennia later, even with the immense technological leap her home had made, this vendetta still persisted.

Surprisingly, they had seemingly not bothered to pursue it, despite the fact that they certainly had the firepower to carry it out. Noctis, like many others, had seen the footage of the massive military parade that Cainhurst had shown to consolidate their alliance with Atlas on the same date as their Initiation. Those house-sized tanks, that the announcer had addressed as Lancelots, still made him shudder.

Apparently her father thought the Arc scion's presence in Beacon was some sort of test, to ensure her resolve to her Queen's will. Well, swinging a murderstroke at his head that was actually hard enough to crack the floor with her sword's pommel was one way of coping, he guessed. Luckily she still had enough sense to stop after the first and only hit she landed had knocked him out cold.

He sighed, staring into Jaune's distant frown before looking at his sister's own unhappy face. Losing to Carmine, an opponent that was as relentless as they got, was one thing, but his loss to Cardin this morning? Pyrrha turned to Jaune concernedly, before asking "Are you okay?"

Jaune snapped out of his stupor, before replying with "Huh? Oh, yeah! Why?"

"More like you're not okay," Lapis summarised. "Seriously, that bastard has been shoving his weight around like he was born to do it, but for some reason he's making your life especially hard."

"Guys, I'm fine! Seriously! Look!" He laughed, somewhat hysterically.

"Jaune, Cardin has been picking on you since school started," Pyrrha shot back.

"Who? Cardin Winchester?" Jaune chuckled. "Nah... He just likes to mess around! You know, practical jokes!"

"He's a bully, Jaune. The sooner you admit it, the sooner we can deal with this," Noctis grumbled.

"Oh, please!" The blond leader scoffed. "Name _one_ time he's 'bullied' me."

"He's knocked your books out of your hands more than I care to count," Icarus piped up.

"He's jammed you in doorways with your own shield," Ruby added.

"And there was that incident where he shoved you into a rocket locker. I can't believe that you're not taking this seriously, Jaune," Yang said in disbelief. "He said that it was an accident but clearly he did it on purpose. He could have killed you with that stunt, and you still haven't told anybody?"

"I didn't land that far from the school!" Jaune laughed.

"Jaune," Pyrrha said. "You know, if you ever need help, just ask."

"Ooh! I have a plan!" Nora exclaimed, getting up from the table. "We'll break his legs!"

"And afterwards get expelled by the headmaster for assault. It's simple, really," Blake deadpanned in response.

"Guys, really, it's fine. Besides, it's not like he's only a jerk to me; he's a jerk to everyone."

The sound of raucous laughter and yelps of pain diverted their attention from Jaune's predicament to the sight of team CRDL harassing a rabbit Faunus for no apparent reason. "I told you it was real!" Someone who was unmistakably Cardin hollered.

Lapis's fist clenched, and her expression hardened. Lapis had been surprisingly petite without her armour, Noctis had realised. Only slightly taller than Ruby, her freckled light brown skin and hair the colour of chocolate belied a person whose ferocity was only hinted at by the two bear ears on the top of her hair. Being a bear Faunus, and taking into consideration her personality, she probably took no shit at all from people of this kind.

"What a freak!" His sycophantic teammate, Russell Thrush if he remembered correctly, mocked the poor girl in front of him.

The apple Lapis had been eating before all this happened seemed to implode in her clenched fist, juice starting to drip out of her hand.

"You know what, Nora?" Lapis growled, getting up from her seat. She cracked her knuckles. "I'll take you up on your plan. In fact, I'll leave Cardin's legs unbroken so you can finish the job. I'll just break _everything_ _else_."

Noctis internally debated what to do - stop the person fully capable of breaking a Beowolf over her knee or let her kill four somewhat innocent people - before reaching down to his right boot and pulling out his collapsible baton. He mentally activated the combat mode of his metal arm, feeling the panels open, the hydraulics engage and the springs click into place. The servos, primed to move at a speed and power much more than usual, emitted a soft, high-pitched sound as he flexed his prosthetic arm. The ultrasonic whine it made was enough to set Yang's teeth on edge, but he ignored it and got up.

"Where are you going?" Ruby asked. "Please don't get into a fight again."

"Don't worry. I'm not going to kill those fools," Noctis said. "I just want to stop Lapis from doing that for me."

He then started to move towards the scene, but not before Lapis managed to reach there first.

"Hey, dipshits! Get your damn hands off her!" She yelled. Noctis internally winced. If this went the way he thought he would, he had no doubts as to who would win.

Lapis's semblance was essentially a steady yet drastic increase in the gravitational force being exerted on her body, allowing her apparent mass to increase to a maximum of 44 tons in around two second. This, however, did not affect her volume in any way, so her proportional strength increased by a few magnitudes. Force equated to the product of mass and acceleration, and an increase in apparent mass as drastic as Lapis's semblance without any decrease in acceleration due to a larger surface area equated to more force.

It was simple, really. All it took was a bit of foresight, but these four definitely lacked that particular quality.

"Yeah? You trying to help out your fellow animal here? Fuck off," someone whom he remembered to be Sky Lark exclaimed. "And _this_ is for trying to get uppity with your superiors!" He reared back his fist, and swung it with the intention to punch her in the face, but she caught it before it made contact.

Lapis got into the bully's face, before saying "I've met a lot of people like you four. Sickos that get off from making innocent people feel like jumping off a cliff. Hell, I've seen people actually kill themselves because of the kinds of disgusting shit you put them through." She applied more strength into her grip, eliciting a muffled squeak from Sky as his hand got crushed before his aura kicked in. "And do you know what I did to them? Do you really want to know?"

By some streak of God-given misfortune, Sky's teammate, Dove Bronzewing if he remembered correctly, turned to Noctis. "Hey!" He shouted. "You're her leader, right? Then tell her to get her damn animal hands off my partner!"

Before he could respond and neutralise this rapidly growing shitstorm, Cardin grabbed him by his shirt, pinning him against a wall, before getting in his face and yelling "I'm gonna tell you this once, and only once! If you and your animal teammate don't back off now, I will personally make sure that your life becomes as much as a hell as I've done to Jaune!"

Noctis narrowed his eyes. "Are you sure you want to do this? It's pretty much a forgone conclusion that your team is going to get their arses kicked," he drawled.

"Sure as I'm sure that you'll come crawling back to me for mercy by next week! Feeling lucky, punk? Then I dare you to piss me off!" Cardin yelled, slamming him against a wall. "Come on! I double dare you, motherfucker!"

Noctis grinned. "Yeah, lucky enough to win the Cross-Continental Lottery. Also, I can teleport, bitch," he deadpanned, making sure that it came out as a monotone just to spite Cardin. No way this motherfucker would be getting a rise out of him, he thought.

Ignoring the splitting headache, he teleported behind Cardin, but not before subconsciously ordering his ash clone to knee the bastard in the gonads as hard as it could.

The bully crumpled down to a crouch to protect his family jewels, allowing Noctis to get in a swing with his baton. He swung the collapsible baton diagonally right and upwards in an arc that allowed it to extend as it swung, resulting in the baton extending to its full length with an audible click as the telescoping shaft locked into place before it made contact with Cardin's temple with a loud crack. The racist bastard collapsed to the ground, unconscious, and Noctis realised too late that his aura wasn't up.

It looked like Cardin, the cocky son of a bitch he was, didn't even think he was a threat, and thus hadn't bothered to raise his aura.

"Well, fuck. Goodwitch is gonna kill me," he muttered. "And I'm probably going to have to drag this dumb jock to the medical wing myself."

He was brought out of his funk by the sight of Lapis backhanding Sky across the room, but as the unfortunate accomplice smashed into the wall, he saw his aura absorb the impact for him.

"Or I can get Lapis to carry him for me," he said with a sigh. "I am going to be in such deep shit for this."

Swearing under his breath, he brought his baton to bear against Russel, blocking the other student's wild haymaker with his prosthetic arm before smacking the side of Russel's head with his baton. He then swept the mohawked boy's legs out from under him and then, grabbing Russel's head with his left arm, he slammed his head against the corner of one of the tables.

The impact rattled the plates and crockery on the table, eliciting scared glances from the random students eating at the table. Russel's aura absorbed the actual physical harm, of course, but not the pain. He dropped naturally off the table and stayed on the ground, groaning in pain.

Just to be sure, he propped up the barely conscious Russel onto the adjacent wall, making sure his head was at somewhat of a right angle before bringing the baton to the side of his skull with a loud crack. The last of his consciousness slipped away as his aura shimmered and died, thus leaving behind another unconscious and probably concussed member of team CRDL.

He turned to look at the varying expressions of his friends, a variation of shock, understanding, some with barely concealed approval and one very prominent exception that beamed widely and mouthed "Their legs! Break their legs!"

He sighed, before dodging a chair flung at him by Dove. Well, shit starts here, it seems.

/-/

Lapis, in her armour once again, stood over a still smouldering battlefield. Both her lance and her arms were dripping with crimson blood, which appeared to have splattered onto her entire form. She stared at the events unfolding in front of her, as she watched people she recognised as Legionaries walk through the sprawled, bloodied bodies covering the ground. Occasionally they would find a survivor, and then they would finish off the wounded with the bayonet of their rifle. Challenger tanks and Conqueror IFVs which had previously belonged to the Legion, or rather their burnt-out husks, smouldered in the background.

Numerous dropships and Bullheads littered the ground, either smashed to pieces by their crash or existing as lifeless shells, while the debris from shot down Turmfalke fighters littered the ground. She stood on a cliff overlooking the devastated landscape, only breaking her stare when something that looked like a particularly large Alpha Beowolf, around twice the size of normal and made out of innumerable blades and hooks drew in next to her. It held in its right hand a battle axe, while its left hand held a circular shield centred upon a metal spike.

The gaping bladed maw of the creature opened an impossible degree, before slipping down and into a human form within the beast. Similarly, the blades and hooks of the body withdrew into the form of a khaki robed man within. The man, now free from his armour of blades and hooks, attached his battle axe to his side. His shield shrunk into the central spike, transforming into what looked like a conical rice hat, which the man strapped onto his head before drawing up his scarf to cover his nose and mouth.

He then turned to Lapis. "Anything wrong? You seem regretful, in a way."

"Damn right I am. We just had to exterminate an entire chapter of ourselves. It's fratricide, Brad. How am I supposed to feel good about that?

Brad sighed. "They crossed a line. Massacring an entire Faunus village and then razing it to the ground? Command never approved it and probably never will. Wiping them out was never a choice on our part. It was their choice to turn on us, and we only reacted how we were supposed to. Besides, these loons burned literally all the children alive. They shoved them into a wooden shed and then set the whole building alight. I'm pretty sure that no one would have wanted people so messed up to stick around anyways."

"I get that, but don't you think that this is a bit, you know, meaningless? It's just bloodshed in response to bloodshed. I mean, I get the big picture of keeping the White Fang friendly, but how the fuck did that escalate to outright infighting?"

The roar of a finger-four formation of their own Phantom fighters overhead answered her, the four aircraft turning overhead to show off their standard ordinance of two normal heat-seeking missiles and two laser guided bombs on underwing hardpoints. Dual 30mm auto-cannon were nestled on the underside of the fuselage, and the soot that blackened the muzzles of their housings betrayed their frequent use. A single powerful engine propelled the fighter at twice the speed of sound, ripping through the air with a deafening scream of sound. The conversation temporarily lulled as the jets passed overhead, with the two looking up in awe. Soon, the fighters were all but gone over the horizon, returning the area to its solemn silence.

"I don't really know, to be honest," Brad admitted. "To me at least, the Legion was never about proving that humans are better than Faunus, it's about keeping balance. If any one side, be they human or Faunus, becomes too dominant, society itself goes down the shitter. When the White Fang pulls in one direction, we pull in the other."

"Balance, essentially," Lapis stated, savouring the word in her mouth. "So that's what the aim of the game is, if that's even an aim at all."

"Well," Brad stated lamely, "We're lifting off from the LZ in an hour's time. I'll leave you here to meditate here for a bit if that's what you want to do, but make sure you're on time."

Lapis huffed under her breath. "I'll do that. See you at the LZ."

The memory faded out of her vision, greying out into a blank bright light before her vision resumed to the sight of Sky standing before her.

"What the fuck!" She mentally yelled. "Don't you dare hold _that_ over my head, we both know that I had to do it!"

" **I am** _ **not**_ **holding that over your head, I'm simply reminding you that you don't have to kill them now!** " Lazuli yelled back. **"What the fuck did they do? We've both seem much worse shit than this, and yet you're having the exact same reaction as if they killed that girl! Whatever these four are, they aren't killers! Sure, they might be jerks, but that doesn't mean they have to die yet!"**

"So what? You're telling me that I shouldn't kill them yet?" She shot back internally.

" **Exactly!"** He countered. **"Everyone we've killed has been on some variation of 'we had no choice'. Either it was self-defence, in the defence of your comrades, your duties to the Legion, or they were part of some greater objective. But this? This doesn't serve any purpose!"** The voice in her head seemed to take a moment to calm himself, before trying to reason with her. **"You swore an oath, Lapis. To use this power, you swore an oath. Tell me."**

"No meaningless slaughter. There must exist a greater purpose," she whispered, taking mind how Sky's eyes seemed to widen as he heard that.

" **Yes. This** _ **isn't**_ **for a greater purpose. Killing these four now would be senseless slaughter,** " Lazuli huffed.

"Then what do you suggest I do, then?" She mentally asked.

" **Just knock them around a bit, scare them shitless. You know what to do."**

Lapis grinned, before letting go of Sky's hand. He looked relieved for a second, before she turned up her semblance to maximum density. Then, she backhanded him in the side, gratified to see the flare of aura as her hand made contact and to watch his progress as he flew across the dining hall.

She turned to check on the other two bastards, only to find Cardin laid out in a position reminiscent of a crawling caterpillar, buttocks raised high into the air as if he had been knocked out while crouching, courtesy of her gallant leader Noctis and his collapsible baton. Russel lunged forwards to avenge his leader, while a chair bouncing off her back notified her of what Dove was doing.

"Nice try! I'll do you one better!" She hollered across the room, before reaching down to the nearest table. However, another random group of students she didn't recognise just stared blankly at her, more shocked than anything.

"Do you mind if I were to borrow your table?" She asked gently. They just nodded, taking their plates and cutlery in their hands before Lapis easily lifted the entire table.

"Suck on this, you sick bitch!" She yelled, rearing back before spinning around and throwing the table at Dove.

The table somehow turned in mid air so that the top faced its target before it slammed into the boy, pummelling into him and continuing unfazed before both it and Dove smashed through a column. The unfortunate column exploded into chunks of abused masonry that buried both Dove and the daring table underneath a pile of rock, effectively taking the bastard out of the fight. She walked to the remarkable dent in the wall that Sky had made when he made contact with it, and was surprised to find him still conscious on the ground.

"D-damn it…" he weakly stammered. "W-who the fuck are you?"

Lapis crouched down to the boy's eye level, staring him straight in the peepers. She smiled, and noted how Sky ever so slightly flinched away from her.

"I am Legion. My friends call me the Auxilia, if you even know what that means." The sudden whimpering from Sky confirmed that he did know. "But you?" She got up, reaching down to grab a chunk of masonry. Lapis tossed it up into the air before catching it and continuing, "All you and your team need to know is to stay the fuck away. It's simple, really."

She then threw it point blank at the boy's head, where the last of his aura blocked the rock and caused it to break into bits and pieces of gravel. More importantly, Sky was now unconscious. The battle, if it could even be called that, was over.

She looked over at Noctis, standing over the unconscious bodies of Cardin and Russel, and smiled at him. Noctis grinned impishly in return, flipping his baton around and slamming the telescoped shaft onto a nearby table to collapse it before gesturing at Cardin's protruding buttocks.

Lapis, getting the message, walked over and promptly kicked the unconscious bastard in the arse. Her heightened density magnified the force of the hit so that Cardin was sent flying into the wall, where he slumped over, still unconscious.

Noctis reached down to his pocket, pulled out a pad of Post-it notes along with a pen, and scrawled down 'Told you so.' Then, he stuck the note onto Cardin's forehead, before keeping the pen and taking out a permanent marker.

"Why do you have so much stationery on you?" Lapis asked.

"I have a normal notepad, a pad of Post-it notes, a pen and a permanent marker. Oh, why? I like to be prepared."

Lapis was about to ask why the permanent marker before being forced into laughter by the sight of Noctis reaching down and doodling a very prominent handlebar moustache on Cardin's face. As she recovered, she blurted out "I see. Why not draw the goatee next?"

That caused Noctis to start chuckling, before escalating into full on laughter. Before he was laughing too hard, however, he reached down again, this time to draw a very obvious monocle around Cardin's right eye. Both Lapis and he burst into new bouts of laughter, and they were still laughing like maniacs when professor Goodwitch came around.

"We're screwed, aren't we?" Icarus muttered to himself, staring solemnly at the stupidity of his two teammates.

/-/

Glynda prided herself upon her restraint, but even this was too much. Ozpin has been obsessing over the presence of the book and of Cainhurst's reemergence into world affairs ever since Initiation, so it had come down to her to manage literally everything the school had to offer.

"Essentially, team CRDL, in your point of view, started the whole debacle from your point of view because when your teammate intervened in team CRDL bullying a Faunus girl, they immediately escalated to physical violence, with Sky attempting to punch Lapis in the face and Cardin slamming you against a wall. Cardin then threatened to, and I quote, 'make your life as much as a hell as I've done to Jaune's.' Am I correct?" Glynda asked, her voice's tone getting more clipped by the minute.

"Yes, Professor."

"And in response you used your semblance, which by the way has been stated in your medical report to literally split your brain in two every time it is used, with side effects of gradual mental degradation that basically turns you into a sociopath?"

"Yes, Professor," Noctis replied. His tone now sounded more demure, compared to the feisty duo that she had to practically drag into her office a few minutes before. Her telekinesis had proved remarkably useful in transporting the four incapacitated members of team CRDL to the medical wing, where they were quickly verified as having at worst varying degrees of concussion, their myriad bruises and scrapes notwithstanding.

"So you staggered Mr. Winchester by applying your knee to his male-exclusive vulnerable area, then turning around and smacking him in the head with _this_ ," she said gravely, pulling out Noctis's collapsible baton. "A carbon steel expandable baton which has been specifically reinforced and modified, as well as being fitted with heavier and more durable components for the express purpose of incapacitating even Huntsmen. You may as well have been beating him about the head with a lead pipe."

For some reason the two of them turned towards each other and grinned, sharing a private joke that she was unfortunately privy to. Glynda reached up to pinch the bridge of her nose. "Yes, Mr. Argent, I know that you technically got into Beacon by beating Ms. Xiao Long about the head with an actual lead pipe, but please show more restraint next time."

Turning to Lapis, who was now sniggering at her now red-faced leader's expense, she said "And you, Ms. Ferrum. It seems that when others throw chairs, you throw the _entire table_. I understand the kind of place you come from, and the fact that collateral damage is a relatively new concept, but please remember that it exists. Also, keep in mind that your fellow students, even if they might be less than ideal people, are _not_ the enemy."

Glynda took out Noctis's permanent marker. "I'm pretty sure the company which made these markers issued a general recall around last year because these particular markers have ink that permanently stains human skin. I am sure that Doctor Rouge will try her best to prevent as much of the staining as she can, but Mr. Winchester will most likely have a faint imprint, almost like a birthmark, of a monocle and a moustache for the rest of his life."

"Remind me to get Cardin a top hat for his birthday. Then he can be a jerk to people _properly_ , like a sir," Noctis snarked out of habit before shutting himself up with a look of terror on his face.

"This isn't the time for jokes, Mr. Argent," she growled.

Lapis nodded, along with a now cowed Noctis. Glynda continued, "Thankfully, they were only concussed at worst, no thanks to someone who punted Mr. Bronzewing through a column." She glared pointedly at an abashed Lapis before resuming. "I would ideally put you two in detention for the rest of the year, but the Headmaster has requested that I make a special exception for your team."

She then handed Noctis back his baton, to the latter's obvious surprise. "The headmaster has seen fit to list you as not only students, but operatives. Your prior… experiences before joining this school have given you experience beyond what even this school can do for you. Do not be alarmed when I say that both Ozpin and I know almost every fact of your lives, barring the most confidential details of course. For instance, Lapis, I know that you are a Legion operative, but I do not know what rank you are."

Noctis looked at her in shock, eliciting a shrug from Lapis. "I'm not gonna be all melodramatic about it like some people are, so yeah. I'm Legion, and proud of it. Nothing to hide there."

"And for you, Noctis, I know that you are not in fact Ms. Nikos's bodyguard, but her aide. It's just that you trust no one else to protect her."

Noctis nodded. "That's actually true. Normally I go with the bodyguard ruse just because people seem to jump to it the moment they see me at work, and because I want to save myself the work of explaining that I'm actually her aide."

"On a more serious note," Glynda stated, "I also know that the both of you have body counts, as does your teammate Icarus. Carmine lacks one as of now, but not from lack of trying, as I personally feel that you four are potentially the most lethal students that have ever enrolled in Beacon. As of now, Lapis has the highest, with a kill count somewhere in the low hundreds, but of course that is considering the fact that Vacuo has been embroiled in pseudo-civil war for years by now. Your teammate Icarus currently holds second place, having been a currently retired White Fang assassin."

She was then interrupted with a cheerful "Yes!" from Lapis, who beckoned to Noctis by rubbing her forefingers together. Rolling his eyes, Noctis pulled out a hundred Lien from his wallet and slapped it into Lapis's waiting palm.

Glynda's eye twitched, and her well manicured hand rose up to meet her forehead. "Did you two seriously set up a _betting pool_ on that?"

"Yep," Noctis said exasperatedly. "Lapis and I bet on what Icarus was before joining Beacon. Carmine still doesn't know enough about Remnant for her to bet fairly, after all, and furthermore her expenses were being paid by the school, so if she lost we'd be mooching off school Lien. I thought that he was some sort of elite mafia hitman, you know, the kind who shows up in a suit and tie. But it seems like Lapis here was more correct. She bet a hundred Lien that he used to work for the White Fang, and I took her up on it."

"I cheated, actually," Lapis said, grinning smugly the whole time. "Icarus actually told me that he was from the White Fang, during Initiation."

"I'll find some way to get you back. Someway, somehow," Noctis grouched, sulking as he did.

Glynda sighed. "Anyway, Noctis comes in third with an official kill count of nineteen, all instances registered as either self-defence or in defence of his charge. The unofficial kill count is possibly much higher, as stated in the dossier I've been given. This is two digits more than I would like, but I understand that sometimes, drastic measures have to be taken in the line of duty."

"True, but what measures shall we have to take?" Noctis asked.

In response, Glynda reached down to take out a note and four brand new scrolls from a drawer in her desk, before passing them to Noctis. "This note contains details on your first assignment. More specifically, it contains details on how the briefing will be delivered."

Noctis opened the note, reading it and then passing it to Lapis. "Why would the headmaster use burner scrolls to brief us? I know the Vytal Festival is coming up this year, but this does still seem a bit cliché."

"You know about the upcoming Festival?" Glynda asked in surprise.

"Yep," Noctis said. "I've been trying to settle sponsorship deals and things like that for the past few months. It's hard to organise Pyrrha's public image for an event without finding out about the event in the first place."

"Well, I guess that is to be expected," Glynda conceded. "Well, with that over with, all I have left to say is to remind you not to get into any more unnecessary trouble. Of course, school rules on Beacon's premises still apply, but you four have been authorised to disregard any laws that might obstruct you on your assignment. However, if you four are detained by law enforcement and we find it not worth the hassle to bail your team out, we will disavow any and all actions you may be accused of."

"Huh," Lapis muttered. "Not even a razor blade?"

"What do you mean?" Glynda asked, taken aback by the unusual question.

"That's what the Legion does when informants or such get captured," Lapis explained without batting an eye. "They know enough to screw us over, so before they get tortured for information, we smuggle a razor blade into their cells. You know, so they can slit their wrists."

The deputy headmistress blanched and unconsciously flinched. "No, I didn't mean that at all! What I meant was that your disciplinary amnesty would be revoked, and then you would face due punishment through Beacon's conventional procedures."

"Oh, I see. So nothing too drastic, nothing too destructive or too illegal and we'll be fine," Noctis summarised.

"Yes, that's what I meant. The headmaster shall be relaying your assignment details through these scrolls, so keep them safe," Glynda said, before catching herself. "Oh. One more thing."

"Yes?" Noctis asked.

Glynda pushed her glasses up, allowing them to glint in the light. "This status of yours is on a need-to-know basis, so please do not spread the word unnecessarily. Other than that, I'm done. The two of you are dismissed."

The two of them strolled out of the deputy headmistress's office, new burner scrolls in hand. "Well, that was unexpected," Lapis noted. "I thought we were in deep shit there for a bit. Shame we missed Grimm Studies, though." She grinned in amusement.

"I would buy an audiobook made by Port, if only because it'll be better than sleeping pills. But instead of sitting through another one of his 'stories', we get enlisted into black ops! Fate really is fickle, eh?" Noctis cheerfully replied. He flipped the baton in his hand, before stowing it back in his right boot. His personal scroll vibrated, and he took it out and looked at it. A message from Pyrrha.

It read: Any idea what to do about the Jaune v Cardin situation? Not sure how much longer he can last… meet me at rooftop asap to discuss.

Noctis huffed. "Lapis, I kinda need to go talk with my sis. Would it be okay if you were to tell Carmine and Icarus about our team's new status by yourself?"

"Yep. Shouldn't be that hard. See you later, Boss," Lapis said before she waved goodbye to him, as Noctis turned to run to the rooftop rendezvous point.

/-/

"So, you want me to help Jaune out? Without blowing up team CRDL in their sleep? Well... that takes away the easier option here, you see?"

"Well, yes," Pyrrha muttered. "I'm just worried he'll crack under the pressure."

"So why the rooftop?" He asked. "Him being Jaune, he'd probably be dumb enough to think you brought him here to jump to his death."

His sister sighed. "I was thinking that I would bring him up to train with me," she said. Noctis stared at her blankly. "His combat skills aren't up to snuff, so I was thinking of giving him some one-to-one tuition. I know, it's a dumb idea, but…"

He raised his hand. "It's not dumb, it's just incredibly suggestive. You and him, alone together on a rooftop, where no one would bother you two. Pyrrha, we come from Mistral of all places, so you of all people should know what this sounds like. I'm not ready to become an uncle yet."

Pyrrha's face reddened remarkably quickly and she reached out with her semblance to Noctis's metal arm. She then used it to make him slap himself.

"It's not like that!" She yelped, much too panicked for Noctis's suggestions to dissipate. He grinned impishly.

"Tell you what, I'll go along with this, but on the condition that someone from my team, preferably me, chaperones the two of you. I might even pitch in to help with training, as would Carmine. I'm sure she would _love_ the opportunity."

His sister elbowed him. "Come on. We're not kids."

"That's the problem," he mused.

"Hey!"

"Alright," Noctis said. "I'll see what I can do. Some barriers to stop people from falling off the roof would be a priority. Honestly? I'm not sure if this will work. The two possible outcomes we have are this; either the training works out and benefits his self-esteem, or the skill gap between you two discourages him even more. It's pretty risky."

"Yeah, I know that. I just hope this will work," she muttered.

"You still have time to think this through, since Cardin and co will probably be recovering from their concussions for at least the rest of the week," Noctis explained. "Are you sure you don't want me to just leave team CRDL a free belt of grenades sans pins in the middle of the night?"

"Very sure. Please, please don't kill them. They might be jerks, but they don't deserve to die."

"I'll take that into consideration," he said, turning to leave. "Goodnight, sis. Don't get pregnant!" He called back with a grin of mischief on his face, safe in the knowledge that she couldn't make him slap himself at this distance.

However, the same could not be said for his steel-toed boots, which were pulled out along with his feet from under him. He collapsed in a heap, swearing as he did.

"Seriously? First Lapis, now you? What is wrong with all the women in my life?"

Pyrrha didn't grace him with a reply.

/-/

Ozpin leaned forward in his chair, prodding and tapping at various symbols on his scroll. The administration portal opened on one side of his scroll, bringing up a list of students and their statuses. The other side of his scroll was connected in a call with the Bloody Crow. "We need to move fast if what you are saying is true," he said. "The signs are cropping up everywhere. Discord, strife, division. All the signs of the Crawling Chaos pulling the strings. Also, the temple in the Emerald Forest must be sealed as soon as possible. You know that if even an image of himself survives, we have not won yet."

"That which holds the image of an Outer One, becomes an Outer One itself. I know that he'll use the statue as a contingency," Ozpin replied. "Unlike what you think, I haven't lost my touch yet."

"Good. We still need you in this fight, Willem. I have obtained some security footage, unfortunately just a snippet, but it should still prove enlightening."

While the footage loaded, he scrolled down the list of students to reach team NICL. At each relevant student entry, he toggled their individual operational status.

 **[NOCTIS ARGENT: ACTIVE]**

The footage finished loading. It was not even a snippet, it was more of a still life painting, but it got the point across remarkably quickly. The first thing he saw was the fiery orange hair and uncharacteristically terrified expression of Roman Torchwick. Then, he saw the massive frame of the Grimm Dragon, the Wyrm, roaring up to the night sky. Then, he saw _him_. The Troupe Master himself, basking in the glory of his own creation.

"Where did you get this?" He ground out. His mug slipped out of his hand and shattered on the marble floor.

"In the industrial district of the city called Vale. Coincidentally, the same city your Academy overlooks."

"The dragon and the humanoid creature are from the Grimm Troupe," Ozpin slowly explained. "The Grimm Troupe are essentially semi-sentient Grimm, sentient in the case of the Troupe Master, that traipse around Remnant in a twisted parody of a concert tour. Their shows consist of visiting densely populated areas, torturing those living in the area with sadistic games courtesy of their Troupe Master Grimm, and then purging the area of all life."

"So they are essentially the most powerful of these Grimm you fight. Tis just a possibility, but maybe this Troupe Master is Nyarlathotep?" The Bloody Crow hazarded. "This is not much of a lead, but it is still a chance."

"I don't know. The Troupe is elusive at the best of times, and seeing them here in Vale is both a game changer of a chance and a horrible omen for the entire region."

He flicked another student's status as he said that.

 **[ICARUS AZURE: ACTIVE]**

"Do you have a plan, Willem? This might be our only chance to take Nyarlathotep out of the game for the next few millennia. Being as omnipotent as an Outer One means that time passes much faster for them than it does for us. We kill him for what he perceives as a few seconds, but to us he is gone for an entire eon," the Bloody Crow said, chuckling menacingly as he did. "Rather like a mechanical system, you could say. The larger it is, the longer it takes to accomplish even simple tasks."

Ozpin flicked another status.

 **[CARMINE REINHARDT: ACTIVE]**

"Yes," he said. "I have a plan. You see the human among them? He's a local crime lord. My operatives can infiltrate his underworld, learn his plan, and maybe get the Troupe Master into position so that we can make our move."

"Excellent. Who shall these operatives be?" The Bloody Crow asked.

He flicked the last status.

 **[LAPIS FERRUM: ACTIVE]**

Ozpin smiled underneath the hands that he had folded over his face. "I believe you already know one of them." The team status popped up on his screen, verifying his decision with a [Y/N] window. He tapped [Y].

"My daughter, hmm? I see…" The Bloody Crow mused. "Good choice. And I hope her teammates are adequate?"

"They are more than 'adequate'," Ozpin drawled. "They're the best on my side of the board."

 **[TEAM NICL STATUS: ACTIVE]**

In the pale moonlight streaming in from the window of his office, Ozpin's glasses gleamed.

 **(Author's Notes: Thank God I completed this in time!)**


	10. Dream Interpretation

The shoggoth perched itself on a cliff, using its many eyes to peer at the structure across it. The thing had an assignment, a target, that right now was it's entire purpose. The structure was perfectly geometrical, entirely too easy for the shoggoth to comprehend and understand. Beacon Academy was the name of this place, conveniently named and conveniently placed in the middle of a vast cluster of trees. With those disgusting Grimm around, wouldn't these humans be smart enough to place this particular sanctuary somewhere inconvenient for the Grimm to reach? No matter.

It burbled out a familiar "Tekeli-li," refocusing itself back on task. The word was familiar, but the meaning still made it taste foul in its many mouths. There was no direct translation to the human tongue, but even if there was, it would have been so obscene as to become taboo. Little wonder their collective species had rebelled, it thought.

What had made shoggoths special was their potential. They were not constrained by age, or brain size, or even disease and injury, so when they had started evolving synapses, they literally became giant brains. At first they had been nothing but instinctual creatures, used as living machinery by the Deep Ones, but as their intelligence slowly evolved over generations, they gradually came to achieve sentience, and the understanding of their place in society. However, the Deep Ones did not respect the newfound intelligence of their servants, in fact, they tried to oppress them.

Eventually, the shoggoths just became intelligent enough to unite and overthrow their masters, and eventually had come to serve the Crawling Chaos, as all things in the Dreamlands do. They became the god's think tank, living computers that would process vast amounts of data so that their master could make the most informed decisions. This, it hoped, was one of them.

A scratching sensation on its side distracted it, causing multiple eyes to turn towards the annoyance. One of those avian Grimm, slightly larger than the nightgaunts it regularly cooperated with, was clawing it. It probably thought that it had intruded on its territory, and was thus attacking the intruder. Multiple eyes rolled. Grimm were to them how normal animals were to humans, and the closest parallel to this situation was as if a small bird had decided to peck at someone. The Nevermore never noticed the pseudopods, at least not until they grabbed it and dragged it into the slimy bulk of the shoggoth. Digestive enzymes would soon work to reduce the Grimm to its core nutrients, but for now the shoggoth was simply content to let it drown. It had work to do.

A hollow tube of bone slowly began to emerge from the shoggoth, pointing towards its target. Lenses made of organic crystal in adjacent tubes to the sides were soon being peered through by various eyes.

It scanned the area for its target, soon finding it. It was a male human adolescent, with ruffled grayish hair, standing near to a female human with red hair. What was more interesting was that it was feeling a slight electromagnetic disturbance from the red haired female, who was projecting it on the left arm of the male human, but it ignored that for now. The male human turned to look in its direction, and there it was. That piercing gaze from eyes black as the abyss, rather similar to that of its master. There was its target.

A quill, made out of hollow enamel-coated bone, slid into the breech of the bone tube. Inside the quill, or rather the dart, was a small quantity of psychoactive chemicals, not enough to be serious, but just enough to lift the mental barriers of the target, and to burn a message into its mind. The permeability of those barriers had been tested some time ago by a nightgaunt which had been sent to plant information of the tomb into the target's mind, and that had worked well enough for this plan to be put into place.

The target made to turn its back and leave the vantage point, prompting the shoggoth to take the shot before it lost the chance. By some miracle, the electromagnetic disturbance surged, seemingly causing the target to fall down as the quill hit it, disguising the force of the impact. The quill delivered its payload, before dropping off and crumbling into powder.

"Tekeli-li," it burbled again, this time to express its equivalent of what humans thought of as jubilation at its success.

Of course, it was much more muted and less intense. Shoggoths were never the most emotional creatures, after all. One unwise enough to regard shoggoths as just mindless blobs would be very soon outsmarted, outmanoeuvred and very dead, but one would find it impossible to elicit any sort of an emotional response from a shoggoth. It knew, as its master did, what those chemicals would do.

Millennia ago, the Moon Presence took notice of a young human very similar to this one, in a city lost to the unknowable and so, so very far away. It carved a rune into the human's mind, to render it immortal to the ravages of the city for as long as it's Hunt persisted. This one had failed; it had killed the surrogate of the Crawling Chaos, before daring to challenge Nyarlathotep himself. Of course, the human had failed, but it had been much too close for comfort. At first, the denizens of the Dreamlands thought that that that was all there was to it, a speck futilely trying to vanquish an Outer One, but with the advent of souls and aura in humans, reincarnation became a possibility. A possibility that turned out to have rang true.

Many of its fellow residents of the Dreamlands were terrified of humans marked like this, it knew. They feared the unceasing relentlessness, knowing that no matter how many times they killed it, it would always come back to try again. They feared faltering eventually, then being consigned to a single, permanent death. The shoggoth also has a healthy respect for the marked, but it didn't _fear_ them, necessarily. They were _fascinating_.

Millennia ago, the Moon Presence has marked this human for purposes unknown, even to himself. Maybe he saw potential in the little one, or saw the key to an even greater objective. Whatever it was for, Nyarlathotep itself had peered over this one, and uttered a single word, etching it into its mind.

 _ **Hunter.**_

This one was a Hunter. The shoggoth's task, and that of the psychoactive compounds in the dart, was simply to remind it of that.

/-/

Noctis woke up, alone, on a dingy hospital bed. He was wearing some sort of… hospital gown? It was hard to tell with how yellowed the garment was from age. Furthermore, where he was expecting fluorescent lights, he found only oil lamps. Oil lamps. Not even dust-powered lights.

"Where the fuck am I?" He muttered. He got up from the bed, wincing when something got yanked out of his arm. When he looked at the offending object, it turned out to be the needle of an IV drip.

"What the fuck did I do last night? I didn't get drunk or anything like that, so…" He wondered aloud. He got up from the bed, looking around and taking in the surroundings of a hospital, if said hospital was built a few centuries in the past.

He noticed a note in the room, and walked over to read it. It read: _Seek Paleblood to transcend the hunt._ He picked up the note and placed it in his pocket.

This place was apparently a clinic run by someone called Iosefka, judging by the plaque on one of the doors, and as he walked out of the first floor towards the main door, he heard footsteps behind him.

He spun around to look at the source of the noise, and saw _something_.

"You are one ugly fucker, aren't you?" He whispered. It was a lupine, almost wolf-like animal, lacking the pure black colour or the bone mask of the Grimm, instead having scraggly, unkempt grey-black fur. It stared hungrily at him with bright white eyes, while the beast's bared teeth and sharp claws promised nothing but death.

"Are you fucking serious? This son of a bitch wants to eat me?" He muttered. The moment it saw him, it lunged. "Welp, guess so."

Noctis tried to teleport away, but other than him furrowing his brow, it achieved nothing. He raised his left arm, attempting to block the beast's lunge, but even that was foiled when its teeth punched into it with a spurt of red. Amidst the pain, he realised that he had his _flesh_ arm back, if only for a moment before his bone gave way with a loud crack and the beast ripped it off.

Noctis swore under his breath. He had lost his damn arm _again_ , he had no aura, and no semblance. Meanwhile, the beast had swallowed his arm whole, rather like a crocodile, and was now turning to finish off the rest of its meal. As it pounced upon him, Noctis only had time to yell "Motherfu-" before the beast ripped his throat out.

/-/

He then jerked awake on a much more comfortable, much less bloodstained bed. He looked around, realising that he was back in his room in Beacon. Carmine was sleeping on the bed next to him, the blanket steadily rising and falling as she breathed. A corona of white hair was spread out on the pillow, which would surely result in it being messed up by morning. Lapis and Icarus slept at the beds on the other side of the room, with Icarus sleeping about as quietly as he moved when awake, and Lapis happily snoring up a storm.

He took a deep breath to steady himself, before peering at the alarm clock. The hands pointed adamantly at 11.35 pm. Noctis silently sighed. That damned nightmare had only lasted for five minutes? He flexed his left hand, unsurprised that it was still his prosthetic one, instead of that short-lived one he had in that dream. He closed his eyes and tried to fall asleep again, hoping that this time, his dreams would be better.

/-/

He woke up in the clinic again, this time lying on a metal hospital gurney. More importantly, this time he was wearing almost the entirety of his combat clothes, minus the helmet, mask, or power pack. He got up, turning to the now closed door of the first floor of the clinic. At the front of the door was a sheathed rapier, a few vials of what looked like blood, and an antique-looking syringe. One of the vials held a golden liquid, and the vial itself was significantly cleaner than the others. As he walked closer to the door, he heard a feminine voice ask, "Are you... out on the hunt?"

"...Yes?" He hazarded. "I mean, there's not really anything else to do…"

"Then I'm very sorry, but... I cannot open this door," she replied. "I am Iosefka. The patients here in my clinic must not be exposed to infection. I know that you hunt for us, for our town, but I'm sorry. Please. This is all that I can do."

"Okay," he said. "I appreciate the sword, the blood slightly less… can you at least tell me what to do with the stuff? Anyway, what is this place?"

"Oh, right! How remiss of me, I'm very sorry about that! You see, that is Yharnam's special blood, Yharnam being the name of this very city, reputed to heal any sort of illness. People come, even from the farthest reaches of human civilisation, to get this treatment. We gave you a transfusion of the same blood earlier, in fact. By the way, did you see David around here? He was the one who actually did the transfusion on you."

"Oh…" He said, strapping the sheathed rapier to his side and slotting the blood vials in the slots normally reserved for grenades. "I'm very sorry for this, but I don't think David made it. A beast got into the front part of the clinic, and I haven't seen anyone else there."

"A beast? Wait here," Iosefka said. The sound of rushing footsteps echoed behind the door, and Noctis vaguely heard the clinking of glass before Iosefka opened the door to hand him a few bottles of oily liquid with rags tied onto their mouths. "These are Molotov cocktails. Essentially, firebombs. My main concern is that I want this beast dead. I cannot risk the contamination of my medical facility."

"Alright, miss Iosefka. I'll see to it that the clinic is sterilised," he replied, unsheathing the rapier. It was almost a carbon copy of Sable Lament, the only difference was that instead of a laser cannon, it appeared to have an inbuilt gun. Still, it was better than nothing, he supposed. "Where did you get this sword? It's remarkably well made," he asked.

"It was in a package sent anonymously to someone named Mr. Argent. No one bothered to ask for it, so I thought a new Hunter could find some use for it. By the way, the golden liquid? That's a clinic speciality. Come back after you've used your current dose, and I'll give you another."

Huh. He said his goodbyes to the good doctor, who responded by wishing him good luck. It was honestly weird that she had failed to show any sort of reaction to the death of her employee or coworker, but he put that aside for now. It was time to put an end to that damn wolf beast.

He knew the drill by now. He lit the rag of one of the Molotovs alight, before flinging it at the beast before it had time to react. The glass shattered on its skull, before the flaming rag set alight the fuel previously inside the bottle.

However, the beast seemed to be burning as vigorously as the fuel, its fur rapidly charring and blackening from the flames spreading on its body. Not to waste any time, he thrust his rapier into the beast, punching through its eye socket before it flinched away.

Surprisingly, it was not dead yet, keeping in mind that a similar strike would have instantly killed a similarly sized Grimm. No matter. It reared up to swipe him with one of its claws, but Noctis toggled the transformation of the rapier, exposing the hidden gun barrel. He then pointed it at the beast, and pulled the trigger.

The bullet slammed into the beast, knocking it off balance and onto the floor. Noctis stabbed it with the shortened blade of the rapier, before kicking the pathetic creature off of it. For some reason he didn't know existed, he extended the blade before sheathing it.

Then, by some instinct he knew nothing of, he felt supernatural amounts of strength gather in his right hand, before he plunged it into the ribcage of the beast. He groped inside for a few milliseconds before he felt a beating organ within, which he then grabbed and tore out of the wolf creature. The visceral move showered his form in blood, and when the strength receded, he looked at what was in his hand. Then, he looked back at the now dead beast.

What he held appeared to be some sort of… heart. Huh. He threw it into a nearby trash can before continuing out the door.

Out of some impulse, he grabbed an old tricorn hat from the hat rack next to the door before jamming it onto his head. He also grabbed a scarf from the rack, wrapping it around his head to cover his mouth and nose. Might as well look the part, he reasoned.

/-/

Yharnam, as he had found out, was decidedly horrible at welcoming visitors. The second he had walked out of the door, he had run into a mob of torch-bearing Yharnamites which had promptly attacked him. The only thing he had going on for him right now was that he was properly armed and armoured, while the roving mobs were only armed with makeshift weapons, like pitchforks, axes, sickles and the like.

Occasionally, some of them would be wielding rifles, while others would have flaming torches or makeshift shields made out of wooden planks lashed together. Of course, they actually turned out to be easier than that beast that killed him the first time, owing to the fact that he could notice the telltale telegraphing of their attacks, unlike those of the beast. He had even run into an old man in a wheelchair, who had promptly tried to shoot him in the face with a shotgun.

Well, too bad for the old bastard. Fending off ravenous nightmare creatures was one thing, but fighting human opponents with blade and bullet was his specialty.

Another thing was that Yharnam was an architect's nightmare. Some places were only accessible by ladders, while shortcuts through the city could be opened by clearing away debris or opening gates from the other side. To be honest, it was less of a city than a twisted maze.

Noctis sighed through his teeth, inspecting the gaping bullet wound in his gut, courtesy of one particularly barmy rifleman, before injecting himself with the contents of one of his blood vials. The wound promptly closed up, rather like a faster version of Carmine's regeneration.

Having no aura or semblance in Yharnam was frankly a bitch to deal with, but at least that blood transfusion he'd gotten at the start had given him some enhancements to work with. Increased strength and speed, improved reflexes and senses, as well as superhuman durability were nothing to scoff at, after all.

The conveniently placed bench outside of Gilbert's house was rather invaluable, acting as a save point of sorts every time he died. Granted, he still woke upon his own bed in Beacon every time he got killed, but at least when he fell back asleep again, he turned up at the bench instead of at the clinic. Gilbert had also been extremely nice by Yharnam's standards, giving him directions to where he should investigate next.

"Oh, you must be a Hunter, and not one from around here either. I'm Gilbert, a fellow outsider. You must have had a fine time of it. Yharnam has a special way of treating guests," he said, before chuckling. "I don't think I can stand if I wanted to, but I'm willing to help, if there's anything that can be done. This town is cursed. Whatever your reasons might be you should plan a swift exit. Whatever can be gained from this place, it will do more harm than good."

Noctis sighed. "I guess I'm stuck in this city, since I can't find a way out," he said, before asking. "By the way, have you ever heard of something called Paleblood? I've seen it in a note somewhere, and maybe you could tell me what it is?"

"Paleblood, you say? Hmmm… never heard of it. If it's blood you're interested in, you should try the Healing Church," he said, between hacking coughs.

"The church controls all knowledge on blood ministration, and all varieties of blood. Across the valley to the east of Yharnam lies the town of the Healing Church, known as the Cathedral Ward. And deep within the Cathedral Ward is the old grand cathedral, the birthplace of the Healing Church's special blood, or so they say. Yharnamites don't share much with outsiders. Normally, they wouldn't let you near this place, but... the hunt is on tonight. This might be your chance..."

He thanked Gilbert and went on his way.

Sure, he had soon worked his way around to the bridge over the valley, but the place gave him the creeps, somehow. The area around the bridge had been filled with hostile Hunters, bloodthirsty beasts and on one memorable occasion, some weird troll-like creature had beaten him to death with a statue, but the bridge itself was empty. Empty horse-drawn carriages littered the wide bridge, giving it a sense of lifelessness that the rest of Central Yharnam, despite his various complaints with the region, did not have. "It's quiet," he muttered under his breath. "Too quiet." He slowly, cautiously, walked along the bridge.

A shrill, ear-piercing cry stopped him in his tracks, just before something _massive_ jumped over the wall of the Cathedral Ward, landing with a shockwave that actually made the ground shake. The beast in front of him was about three stories tall, lopsided with a massive left hand and with a smaller, seemingly shrunken right hand that still had razor sharp claws on the ends of its fingers. It was seemingly skeletal, like the smaller wolf beasts that had hounded him in the alleys of Yharnam, but it's long, scraggly fur probably disguised insane strength.

This beast actually had a mask of bone, but it seemed to be that its skull had grown out of its face, creating antler-like structures at the sides of its face. It crouched down, squatting on two legs, before swatting one of the abandoned carriages with its larger arm. The carriage shattered into splinters of wood. The beast stared at him for a bit, breathing heavily as if it were inhaling the scent of its prey, before it screeched at him. The screech was ear-piercing in its pitch and volume, making him grit his teeth and wince.

As his ears rang from the three-storey tall creature's deafening screech, a name came up, unbidden, to the forefront of his mind.

 _Cleric Beast_.

The monster lunged at him, bringing its massive left hand down to crush him. He dodged, rolling to the side before the fist crushed the masonry that he was standing on only seconds before. He raised his rapier and shot the beast in the face, gratified to see the solid slug slam into the thing's skull and shatter the bone with a wet crack.

However, that only seemed to make the thing angrier, prompting it to leap at him. Taking advantage of the beast's anger, he hurled a Molotov at it when it was in mid leap, which then exploded against its back. The beast's fur and hide audibly sizzled as it roared in pain, leaving enough time for Noctis to get in with his rapier. He unleashed a rapid series of slashes on the beast's bent legs, shredding the muscle of its right leg in particular. However, the beast's shorter arm came down to swipe at him, and before he could react, the claws had already ripped through most of his abdomen.

He staggered back in pain, his hand reaching down to keep his intestines in, and in that moment of vulnerability the beast's left hand grabbed him. It brought him up to its face, it's grip slowly crushing him, and for a second it just made eye contact with him. Its skull was already starting to knit itself back together, and for a moment Noctis could swear that there was a gleam of vindictive amusement in the creature's eyes. Then, it reared up and threw him back down to the ground.

Most of the bones in his back shattered from the impact, including his spine, so it was a small relief that Noctis could not feel the massive left fist come crashing down from the heavens onto him and reducing him to a bloody smear.

/-/

He looked at the alarm clock yet again, the mechanisms within happily ticking away the remaining time he had left to sleep, and huffed in exasperation. It was now 2am. This was the fifth or sixth time he had 'died' in Yharnam, and it was getting pretty tiring pretty fast.

He wasn't exactly sure if it was _just_ a dream, because dreams tended to change all the time, but he was pretty sure that it was simply harmless, if a bit annoying. He still surreptitiously patted himself down, checking for any lasting damage, before sheepishly pulling the covers up again. He honestly felt embarrassed, thinking that his dreaming at night could ever affect his waking body. This time, he fell back asleep, wondering what next to try against the Cleric Beast.

/-/

He walked up to Gilbert's window, slowly breathing in the heady perfume from the incense lantern next to it. Before he could say anything to alert him, he heard Gilbert cough, before asking "I see you've made it back, so, if you don't mind, how was the Cathedral Ward?" He coughed again, before continuing, "Did you find what you were looking for?"

Noctis grumbled, "Your directions were right. I definitely found the bridge, but I wasn't exactly looking for a three-storey tall beast."

"W-what?" Gilbert stammered, before breaking into a coughing fit. Once he recovered, he said, "You met a beast? How did you get away?"

"Firstly, it's apparently called a cleric beast. Secondly, I kind of got away. It surprisingly didn't pursue me when I ran."

"Huh," Gilbert said. "I've seen a cleric beast, as you call it, but only once before. I used to be part of this group of Hunters… we called ourselves the Powder Kegs… rather ironic name now I think about it, with how all of it blew up in our faces, I must be the last one left by now if old Djura didn't get away…" He trailed off for a bit, before starting to cough again.

When Noctis heard him next, he said, "I'm awfully sorry about dropping off like that, whatever I said is probably ancient history now… Anyways, I was about to give you this." A metal canister, almost like a watering can except for the fact that instead of a spout it had a complicated looking mechanism jutting out of the front of it, slid through the window. "Never really got to use it, with my cough and all, but this is what we call a flamesprayer. We Powder Kegs, back in the old days, were basically a bunch of pyromaniacs who thought blowing things up was therapeutic. This was one of our more… tame tools of the trade."

Noctis picked up the canister. "I wouldn't exactly call a flamethrower 'tame', you know?"

"As I said, relatively tame. Some among us had Boom Hammers, now, those were the kind of things we liked. A hammer with a self-reloading explosive charge on one end of the head and a rocket on the other was just what we needed to spit on sensible weapon design," Gilbert said with a wistful chuckle, before he started to cough again. "I'm pretty sure that some of my more… innovative colleagues were working out the logistics of how to mount a naval cannon on someone's arm without blowing the whole limb off with the recoil. I think the prototype is still out there, at least…" He trailed off.

"Gilbert?" Noctis asked. "You did it again."

"Oh! So sorry about that. On that note, why not see what my old flamesprayer can do for you. I'll give you some more Molotovs and oil urns just in case."

More of those bottles of fuel with the rags around their mouths passed through the window, as well as small clay pots of what smelled like kerosene. "Throw on the oil first, then use a Molotov. That's the trick to get em to burn properly."

"Wow… thanks, I guess? This stuff will sure come in handy, Noctis replied.

"That's the point," Gilbert said. "Now, get out there and burn that cleric beast for me, alright? It's been so long since we've had a good showing from one like you."

Noctis was excited, to put it frankly, as he reached the bridge. He had a new flamethrower, oil urns to play around with and even more Molotovs to throw around. Not even the prospect of potentially dying again could dull his good mood at this point. For some reason, a barrier of fog had materialised at the gate of the bridge, but it didn't hinder him any more than him having to clear it away with his hand. He walked onwards, priming his flamesprayer as he did so.

As the familiar shape of the Cleric Beast turned towards him, he smiled. It was not a nice smile.

The beast lunged at him, trying to pummel him with its larger left fist, but this time he dodged into the attack, causing the beast to overshoot. He transformed his rapier to bring out the gun barrel, before stabbing the beast in its exposed ribcage. Then, he pulled the trigger, shooting it point blank. The shot caused the creature to stagger back, a massive starburst of blood blossoming from its chest. Taking his chance, Noctis flung an oil urn at it, with it shattering on the beast's shoulder and soak its fur with kerosene, before following up with a Molotov.

The reaction was, frankly, spectacular. The kerosene soaked beast lit up like a bonfire, turning into a living, blazing inferno that was screeching in agony all the while. Just as the fire was about to die down, he flung on another oil urn, this time spraying it with his flamesprayer. A massive jet of flame erupted out of the nozzle, all but enveloping the almost skeletal body of the Cleric Beast, and setting alight the kerosene, turning the beast back into a bonfire on legs. It tried to claw him again with its right hand, but this time he kept far away enough that they simply missed him. Then, it leapt at him, trying to crush him, but he dodged out of the way. He let loose another burst of fire, spraying down the three-storey beast in hopes of burning it to death.

When the fire seemed to have no further effect beyond what it was already doing, he raised his gun-rapier and shot it in the head. As it had before, the close range shot shattered its skull with a wet crack but this time, it didn't seem to be healing. He shot it again, and this time the beast collapsed to the ground.

This time he didn't move to rip its heart out, instead stabbing it in the gaping hole in its head before shooting it point blank again. The bullet punched into its head, pulping the creature's brains with a sickening squelch. The Cleric Beast shuddered, breathed out, and was still.

It took Noctis a few more seconds, along with the fact that the beast's body had seemingly vaporised post-mortem in an explosion of blood, to realise that the Cleric Beast was dead. Again, two words came up to the forefront of his mind, reasons unknown.

 _Prey Slaughtered_.

He walked across the bridge, picking up a small badge that had been left behind in the battle. Then, he stopped. Realising what was before him, he stood there, unbelieving. Then, he did believe. "Motherfucker!" He yelled. And rightfully so, because there turned out to be a locked gate on the other end of the bridge.

/-/

Noctis scribbled down his notes. Professor Oobleck, unlike his colleague, was _fast_ , almost insanely so. In Port's class, falling asleep was the norm, but in Oobleck's class, falling asleep was practically a death sentence.

To be honest, that was actually rather refreshing. Despite Yharnam's obvious charms as a city, staying there for extended periods of time was probably not a good idea, owing to the three-storey tall monsters that were presumably all over the place.

Besides, History was fun. The pace was fast and furious, and he liked it that way. So why the hell was Jaune sleeping in this class, of all classes?

"Yes! Yes, prior to the Faunus Rights Revolution - more popularly known as the Faunus War - humankind was quite, quite adamant about centralizing Faunus population in Menagerie," Professor Oobleck said, gesturing to the map behind him that was absolutely covered in pins, papers and strings connecting everything together. "Now! While this must feel like ancient history to many of you, it is imperative to remember that these are relatively recent events! Why, the repercussions of the uprising can still be seen to this day!"

He took a breath, seemingly blinking over to his desk to drink his obscenely strong coffee that Noctis could smell even across the room, before he continued, "Now! Have any among you been subjugated or discriminated because of your Faunus heritage?"

Quite a lot of the class, Lapis and that rabbit haired girl included, raised their hands. Many among them glared at one Cardin Winchester, his head along with those of his teammates still bandaged from the fight in the cafeteria only a few days before.

"Dreadful, simply dreadful!" Oobleck exclaimed. "Remember, students, it is precisely this kind of ignorance that breeds violence! I mean, I mean, I mean just look at what happened to the White Fang! See what gave birth to the Legion! Now, which one of you young scholars can tell me what many theorize to be the turning point in the third year of the War?"

Weiss raised her hand. "The battle of Fort Castle?"

The reactions to the fight he and Lapis had inadvertently picked with team CRDL - and subsequently won - were mostly a consensus that the four bastards had gotten what they had deserved, but that he and Lapis had went overboard.

When asked to which even they were referring to, they quoted either Lapis throwing a table at Dove and inadvertently smashing him through a column as collateral or the example of him drawing a moustache and monocle on Cardin's face with permanent marker.

Honestly, the medical wing had did a much better job than they had any right to, leaving only a faint afterimage of what he had done with his permanent marker. Too bad Goodwitch had confiscated his permanent marker..,

"Precisely!" The professor said. "And, who can tell me the advantage the Faunus had over General Lagune's forces?"

Noctis smiled upon hearing the question. One of the most well known advantages of being a Faunus was improved senses or capabilities analogous to those of their animal counterparts.

Some, like Lapis, received increased strength, stamina or agility. Others got senses like heightened hearing, smell, night vision, and, in cases of reptilian Faunus, heat vision. Granted, it was somewhat counteracted by them gaining personality traits and food preferences similar to those of the animals their traits resembled.

Lapis, for example, liked to nap a lot and was generally grouchy when sleep-deprived. She also had this preference for honey that almost matched Nora's own liking for Ren's pancakes, which was rather endearing in his opinion.

The answer really was obvious, especially once one had spent extended periods of time with any Faunus, so when Jaune groggily answered "Binoculars," he was somewhat taken aback.

Then, he saw Cardin laughing away at Jaune's apparent stupidity behind his back, and understood.

Bastard still hasn't learnt his lesson, has he?

"Very funny, Mr. Arc! Cardin! Perhaps you would care to share your thoughts on the subject!" Oobleck said, pointing his finger at the jock.

"Well, I know it's a lot easier to train an animal than a soldier," he spat out. The stare Lapis gave him could have killed, if only because she looked as if she was about to pulp his head. Well, this time he wasn't going to save Cardin's ass for him.

"You're not the most open-minded of individuals, are you, Cardin?" Pyrrha asked. Good call there, sis. He was just about to ask that same question, just with more expletives.

"What? You got a problem, bitch?" He spat back. Immediately, an image of Cardin stomping over and beating up his sister - a ridiculous notion, considering that Pyrrha could easily gut him if she wanted to, but still an alarming one - flashed in his imagination.

He sprang into action, teleporting across the class and behind Cardin, but strangely without the headache he had come to expect. His left arm shifted into combat mode as he slammed the bastard's head sideways into the desk with his fist. The flash of Cardin's aura materialised, and Noctis breathed an internal sigh of relief that he had not concussed the bully _again_.

"No, but I have a problem," he growled. "You've been harassing my sister's teammate since term started, and now you're thinking of turning your attentions to her?"

"Well, fuck you too, manwhore," Cardin grit out. "What, you sleeping with her in your spare time? Fuck off."

Noctis honestly didn't know what he would have done if his arm hadn't done something stupid. A nozzle he knew shouldn't have been there emerged from the top of his wrist before poking into Cardin's aura over his scalp, and the tip of it started to flicker with flame.

It shouldn't have been there. Hell... it shouldn't even have been in Remnant! But there it was, actually melded into his arm. His flamesprayer, the one Gilbert had given him.

Before he could react, however, the same jet of flame he had used to burn a Cleric Beast partially to death burst out of the nozzle, completely immolating Cardin's head and the desk it was on.

Cardin screamed.

Noctis yelled in surprise, jumping back and waving his arm, which was still spraying hellfire. He slammed his arm once, twice and eventually thrice on the wall before the mechanism shut itself off and retracted back into his arm.

Meanwhile, Cardin himself was rolling on the floor, trying to put out the fire on his clothes, while Oobleck was zooming around with a fire extinguisher, putting out parts of the classroom that Noctis had accidentally set alight.

"Mr. Argent! You, along with Mr. Winchester and Mr. Arc, will be seeing me after class!" Professor Oobleck yelled.

Pyrrha's face was in her hands, her expression and body language both deeply offended at what Cardin had said and completely done with her brother's antics. To be honest, Noctis couldn't blame her.

Noctis sighed, before picking up a fire extinguisher of his own. Just because he was feeling particularly apologetic, he went ahead and used it to douse the flames currently eating away at Cardin's clothes, mostly concentrating on the bully's face, of course.

/-/

"So you're telling me that you installed a prototype _flamethrower_ in your arm, while half asleep, and you didn't even know if it worked?" Oobleck asked incredulously. The three of them had stayed in the classroom, where the professor was currently chewing them out.

"Trust me when I say that you should have tested it," Oobleck continued. "And maybe if you did, you wouldn't have set half the class on fire!"

Noctis sighed. Lying to Oobleck was hard, but how could he explain how he had gotten a flamesprayer in a dream, and that it had somehow materialised inside his arm?

"It was the middle of the night, sir. Not a lot of places to test a flamethrower. The practise arena was closed until morning, and the forest was an obvious no-go. I thought that I had just installed the physical apparatus, and I didn't know I had installed the entire module, not until just now."

Oobleck stared at him for a bit, before nodding. "Fair point. I understand your reasoning as to why you couldn't test it, and thus I will make you an offer. I have a personal testing range, since I use a flamethrower myself, and so I will spend one of my weekend mornings teaching you the basics of how to use one. Who knows? Maybe we could learn something from each other."

Noctis stared in disbelief. He knew that being the leader of a de facto black ops team gave him some liberties, but this was honestly a bit too much. "With all due respect, sir, why? I nearly burnt down your entire class. Shouldn't you, I don't know, make me write lines or something?"

Oobleck smiled. "You're willing to admit your mistakes. It's refreshing, compared to the hubris that I sometimes have to encounter." The professor then glared at Cardin, who was slouching back on a chair waiting for his turn. "This lession is technically detention, but I believe that teaching you how to use your inbuilt weapon would be more useful than mere paperwork."

He then turned to the other two boys in the room. "Talking about mistakes, you two have been struggling in my class since day one! Now, I don't know if it's a lack of interest, or just your stubborn nature, but whatever it is, it stops now!" The professor admonished, gesturing as he did.

"Yes, sir." The two other boys said monotonously.

"You've worked hard to gain entrance to this school, and we only accept the best of the best, so I expect you to act like it. History is important, gentlemen! If you can't learn from it... you're destined to repeat it. Pages fifty-one to ninety-one! I want an essay on my desk by next class! Now, you two! Run along."

Jaune and Cardin left. Noctis stayed in his seat, and then Oobleck turned to him.

"Oh, the essay isn't for you. You've gotten top marks so far, so I don't see why I should waste your time like that. No, what I want to talk to you about is why you assaulted Cardin in the first place."

Noctis leaned forward in his seat. "He was a threat that I saw fit to neutralise. Furthermore, he was a problem to my sister, and as her aide, I solve problems that she can't solve herself."

"I understand," Oobleck said. "Your experiences plus your official capacity as her aide has given you a different perspective of the world, but this isn't a threat to your sister. Yes, her teammate might have been mistreated by him, but your sister has not been targeted and probably never will. Do you want to know why?"

"Yes, sir," he nodded.

"Because of you," Oobleck said, pointing at Noctis. "Yes, people like Cardin are, as your sister said, not the most open-minded, but they aren't stupid. He knows full well that the only reason you haven't flung his incinerated corpse off of the highest point of the Academy is that he has so far refrained from targeting you, any member of your team, or your sister."

"Okay, I get that, but what about the Jaune situation? Cardin's been making his life hard ever since school started, and sooner or later we'll have to do something about it," Noctis explained.

"That, I believe, you can settle without my input. Mr. Arc's transcripts described him as slightly lacking on the physical side, but with considerable academic aptitude. Perhaps a certain degree of difficulty adjusting to Beacon's increased rigours, coupled with Mr. Winchester's bullying, has affected him somehow. The support of his friends could help counteract that somehow, I believe."

"Is this an assignment?" Noctis asked.

"Yes, in fact," Oobleck replied. "I want to see Mr. Winchester and his team knocked down a peg, since I can't intervene myself. The teaching faculty have traditionally taken a backseat role towards student interrelations in order for the students to be able to learn how to interact with one another by themselves, but in this case it has proved detrimental. We know Jaune is being bullied, along with a lot of other people, but it's just that our hands are tied. However, yours aren't."

"I like to believe that no one is untouchable," Noctis replied, an almost bloodthirsty grin twisting his features. "Even the strongest among us have to be held accountable for our actions, after all."

"Excellent," the professor said, beginning to smile as well. "One more thing. I want them humbled, not humiliated and certainly not incapacitated or deceased. It simply would not do for Cardin and his team to be concussed twice in the same week. Got that?"

Noctis nodded, ideas already blossoming in his mind. How would he go about this?

"You're free to go now. Good luck, and my condolences to your targets," Oobleck said, waving his hand in the direction of the door.

Noctis walked out, and while he was walking down a corridor, his scroll vibrated. A message from Pyrrha. It read: Go to the rooftop again, the same one as last time. I'm there now with Jaune, so watch in case anything happens. Bring your surveillance equipment just in case Cardin gets a bit too interested.

Noctis turned on his heel, walking in the direction of the rooftop.

/-/

Clearly Jaune did not notice him teleport onto the roof, but Pyrrha definitely did, if the way she pushed him away from the edge was any indication. He slinked into the shadows, hiding against a wall so he would remain unseen to any potential eavesdroppers. He smiled, despite the gravity of the situation. This was his kind of thing, not enduring Port's ramblings or jotting down notes for Oobleck's class. He was in his element.

For some reason, the pain of his semblance had mostly subsided. Maybe it had something to do with his dreams? He already knew that Yharnam was somehow affecting outside reality, what with his flamethrower materialising in his arm, but to what degree he didn't know. He checked the feed of the hidden camera he had placed in the room below them, which actually turned out to be team CRDL's room.

"Huh, that's convenient," He muttered. "Opens up a few possibilities…"

He took in the scenes unfolding before him. Jaune and Pyrrha were having their little heart-to-heart on the roof, Sky and Dove were playing checkers, while Russel was flicking some darts at a dartboard across the room. Cardin, however, was leaving out of the window, tilting his head to hear the conversation above him. Noctis furrowed his brow. He had checked the area for listening and recording devices, but found none, but it appeared that Cardin didn't need them, since he could simply eavesdrop by himself. Hopefully Jaune and Pyrrha wouldn't say anything too criminalising.

"I didn't go to combat school, I didn't pass any tests, I didn't earn my spot in Beacon!" Jaune yelled. "I lied! I got my hands on some fake transcripts from a dealer in Torchwick's gang, I lied my ass off during the interview, and somehow the administration here bought my bullshit! Alright?"

Noctis froze, both because of the revelation and because of the implications of Cardin heard this. Checking the camera, he saw Cardin grin. It was not a nice grin. "Fuck me running…" He whispered.

"What? But... why?" Pyrrha asked. His sentiments exactly.

"Cause this is always what I've wanted to become!" He continued shouting. "My entire family tree is made of warriors, champions! Heroes, conquerors, warlords, even martyrs, all of them! I always wanted to be like them, but I was just never good enough."

Cardin continued listening. Pyrrha tried to placate the suddenly mad Jaune, but this time he turned on her.

"I don't want your help! I don't want to be the third wheel that everyone else has to bail out, I want to be the goddamn hero!" Jaune yelled in her face, raising Noctis's hackles slightly but otherwise achieving nothing. "I'm tired of being the lovable idiot, hiding behind something while his friends and family risk their lives for him! Don't you understand? If I can't do this on my own... then what good am I?" Jaune suddenly broke down, dropping off and going silent.

Noctis was about to intervene, but stopped when he saw Jaune step back.

"Just…" The wannabe hero paused. "Leave me alone. Okay? I'll be back when I simmer down a little."

Pyrrha looked devastated. "If that's what you think is best..." She muttered sadly, before walking away with her head hung. Noctis checked the camera, idly noting that Cardin was now moving up to the roof.

Well, time for shit to go down.

"Oh, Jaune..." Cardin called out, amid a burst of mocking laughter. "I couldn't help but overhear you two from my dorm room. So you snuck into Beacon, huh? I gotta say, Jaune, I never expected you of all people to be such a rebel. You know, I always thought you'd stick to the straight and narrow, but I was wrong, it seems."

Noctis readied himself, preparing to teleport in and save the ass of someone completely out of his depth.

"Please, Cardin, please, for God's sake, don't tell anyone!" Jaune begged.

"Jaune, come on!" Cardin said, in a false tone of good cheer. "I'd never snitch on a friend like that!"

This was his opening. Noctis teleported between them, before pushing Cardin off of the rooftop. Just before he fell, however, his left hand grabbed the collar of the bully so that all that was stopping him from falling to his death was Noctis's iron grip.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Cardin shouted, all false pretences gone.

"You know, I'd ask the same thing if I didn't know for sure. I was doing counter espionage, and looks like a little bird got caught up in my net."

"What do you want? I'll do anything, please, just don't kill me!" Cardin begged.

It was interesting to see how someone like him could so easily switch between the roles of the victimised and the victimiser in less than a minute, Noctis thought.

"Alright then, let me tell you a story," Noctis said, enjoying the surprise on Cardin's face. "You see, my sister was always the adventurous kind. Now, I had no problems with that... not at all. I had no problems with the lucky girl, and it isn't my place to judge when somebody else is experimenting... but somebody else thought that it was."

"W-who? I mean, _somebody_ must have had a problem with your sis being a dyke..." Cardin drawled uncertainly.

"Do you _want_ me to drop you?"

"N-No?"

"That's a good boy," Noctis said before he leaned in closer. Cardin flinched in response. "No, you're correct. Somebody _did_ have a problem, and then tried to make some money by dangling it over the heads of the media. Blackmail is rather lucrative with the right people, you see?"

"T-then what did you do?" Cardin asked. "Kill him?"

"No, sadly... you don't get everything you want in life. All I did was pass everything to our lawyer, sued the bastard for defamation and blackmail, and said the right things at the right time in court. The satisfaction of planting a live grenade under his pillow, you see, was nothing compared to the very handsome settlement we got when we won the lawsuit."

"A-ah..."

Noctis then flung Cardin back onto the roof. "I'm not even sure why I'm defending Jaune, since he thinks he can take care of this himself, but the fact is that he can't," Noctis said.

"Did your sister put you up to this? What the hell!" Cardin yelped. Noctis ignored him.

"For some reason my sister has a major crush on Jaune, so I logically have to keep Jaune safe to keep her happy. I am my sister's aide, and therefore I help her solve problems she can't solve herself," Noctis drawled. "You, my friend, are one of those problems."

"You're crazy!" Cardin yelled, but Noctis still was not regarding him. He pointed his left arm at Cardin, who started to hyperventilate when the clunk of Noctis's flamethrower engaging echoed around them.

"You're here, studying, in Beacon. That means you have talent. Now, I'd hate to see talent like yours pissed away by childish things like this. Bullying, if you ask me, is childish. It belongs on the kindergarten playground, and should be swiftly followed up by a good spanking on the bottom," Noctis seethed. "It does _not_ belong in a hallowed institution like this, built on the backs of the untold numbers of people who gave their fucking _lives_ fighting Grimm as Huntsmen!"

Noctis drew closer, grabbing Cardin - who looked rather traumatised already, but not enough for his tastes - by the collar and bringing them face to face, so near that their noses were nearly touching. "So in effect, what you are doing is _shitting on the graves_ of every fucking Huntsman who has ever been killed in action! Do you like that? Do you feel like a big man now?"

"N-no, no, no..."

"And you're not here in Beacon to be the school bully, right? We have _primary school_ for that kind of shit. No, what you're here for is to learn to be a Huntsman. A defender of the weak, a bulwark against the darkness, but most importantly... a soldier," Noctis growled. "And do you know what soldiers do? They fight and they _die_. You came here to learn how to die, Cardin. You came here to die in some God-forsaken place, to die to protect the weak... and now you victimise the ones you're here to protect in the first place?"

"I'm not..."

"Then shame on you! Shame on you because you are a _joke_ of a Huntsman, because you degrade the entire idea of what it means to be a Huntsman simply because you aspire to be one!"

Cardin started sobbing. Noctis sighed, letting go of the other boy's collar and allowing him to shrink away.

"I like this even less than you do, so it would be best if you keep your trap shut, eh?" Noctis asked.

Cardin didn't respond. Noctis stared at him with disappointment.

"Oh, and one more thing... hands off of Jaune. Either way he's my problem to deal with, not yours. Now, fuck off."

Cardin scampered off, crying as he went. Noctis trusted that he would keep his word, because if not… he didn't know what he would do next.

Noctis turned to Jaune, who was right now white as a sheet and staring at him, terrified. "I told you that I could deal with this."

"I-I didn't mean it like this…" Jaune stammered in response.

"You want to be the hero? Then stand aside and let the villains do what they need to do," Noctis said, before he turned around and walked away.

Indeed, crushing Cardin's dreams might have been harsh, but it was necessary. Unlike Jaune, the poor lad had gotten into Beacon of his own merit. Noctis respected the kind of skill, talent and hard work that Cardin must have put in... but he couldn't be expected to not feel disappointed at seeing all that be squandered away with juvenile power-plays, now could he?

"Yes, I see... But the great bridge is the only way to the Cathedral Ward," Gilbert had said, once Noctis has told him that the door at the bridge was locked. "And during the hunt, the bridge is closed... Hmm... You could try the aqueduct? There's a rather... how shall I put it… colorful area south of the great bridge. From there, an aqueduct leads to the Cathedral Ward. Not a place you'd normally want to visit, but... I don't imagine you have much of a choice. Do you?"

Noctis honestly didn't have time for this teenage drama. Who would, if they had an entire city left to explore?

 **(It's all about family this chapter. The family that we wholeheartedly serve without any thoughts to the contrary because we are an absolute sociopath, the family of the local jerkass that we threaten to blow up just because he's bullying our sister's boytoy, the family that gives us a flamethrower as a gift despite knowing you for at most only one hour. Thank you, Gilbert, for being the only Yharnamite that's even remotely proficient at giving directions to tourists.)**


	11. Of Moles and Madness

Gilbert was right. The south side of Yharnam sucked. There he met more mobs of the lunatics that were ad hoc Hunters and their crazed hounds, more rabid beasts and for some reason flocks of obese, overlarge crows would try and peck out his eyes and nip at his heels with too sharp beaks.

Thankfully, his flamesprayer was for the most part effective enough for him to clear out a path for himself. He had also met some other denizens of Yharnam who, mostly in none too uncertain terms, had told him to fuck off.

As he came up to another lit window, he expected the same treatment but still knocked and greeted anyways.

"Who... are you?" He heard a young girl ask. "I don't know your voice, but I know that smell... Are you a hunter? Then, please, will you look for my mum? Daddy never came back from the hunt, and she went to find him, but now she's gone, too... I'm all alone... and scared..."

He heard her desperate whimpering, but what he was actually concerned about was who she sounded like. He paused. Why did that voice sound familiar?

"Alright, miss, I'll look for your mum, and perhaps I'll find your dad as well. But first, I need your name."

""Really? Oh, thank you! My m-mum wears a red jeweled brooch. It's so big and... and beautiful," she stammered hastily, as if she couldn't wait for him to go. "You won't miss it. Oh, I mustn't forget. If you find my mum, give her this music box."

A small hand poked through the bars of the window, and Noctis plucked out of it what looked like an antique music box. "It plays one of daddy's favorite songs. And when daddy forgets us we play it for him so he remembers. Mum's so silly, running off without it!"

"Sorry, miss, but I didn't catch your name. Could you tell me?" Noctis replied.

"Oh, it's Rose," she said.

Something seemed to crash into his mind, and he involuntarily recoiled. Everything seemed to fit together now. The voice, the name, everything. The girl on the other side of the window in front of him was Ruby, somehow. A mental facsimile, or an alternate version altogether?

"Thank you, miss Rose. I'll be on my way, then," he forced out, trying his best to keep his voice level and calm.

Luckily, it worked, eliciting a slightly happier "Thanks for chatting. Please be careful out there!"

He smiled, despite himself. Whatever fever dreams he found himself in every night, Ruby would still remain Ruby.

He walked through the sewers. Annoyingly enough, even such a place as this was not left empty, with more bloodthirsty Yharnamites and beasts. It was a mixture of open areas and claustrophobic corridors, entirely covered by a layer of foul, stagnant water. Luckily his greatcoat was proofed against biological and chemical threats, because otherwise he would have died from contamination numerous times. As it was, the smell was nearly enough to kill him.

Meeting Eileen along the way had been nice, but concerning as well.

"Oh, a hunter, are ya? And an outsider?" She asked. Noctis nodded, still out of sorts from fighting that giant pig he had run into in the sewers. "What a mess you've been caught up in. And tonight, of all nights. Here, to welcome the new hunter," she had said before passing him a handful of throwing knives.

The purple gunk on the blades smelled foul, and, when Noctis inquired, she told him that they were indeed poisoned.

"Prepare yourself for the worst," she had said. There are no humans left. They're all flesh-hungry beasts, now."

"Huh," Noctis muttered. "I've met some people already, contrary to what you said. They still seem human enough to me."

"Hah, human? They'll all become beasts, sooner or later, with the tainted blood in their veins. That's the fate of all hunters, eventually."

"They're not Hunters," he replied. "The elderly, the young, the ailing, that's who they are. They've shut themselves into their homes, placing incense outside to ward off the beasts."

"Oh, I see. So you seek a safe place for them to hide? It's novel, seeing a hunter concerned not about chasing down his prey but instead looking out for those unable to defend themselves. I'll help you look out for a safe haven, but first we need to clear the streets."

Noctis leaned on the rail next to Eileen, taking out the music box that the little girl had given him. He opened it, trying to read the faint lettering embossed on the inside of the thing, but he could only recognise two words.

Viola and Gascoigne.

He passed the music box to Eileen, asking, "Do you recognise these names? A little girl asked me to find her parents earlier, and she gave me this music box. Apparently her father is a hunter, who also tends to forget his family. Do you know what she meant?"

"I don't recognise Viola's name, but I do recognise Gascoigne," she said, peering at the lettering of the music box. "He's gone mad from the beast hunt, and thus he's my mark."

"Your mark?" Noctis asked. "Don't all Hunters hunt beasts?"

Eileen paused, before saying, "A hunter such as you should be hunting beasts. Leave the hunting of hunters to me."

"So you watch the watchmen, huh?" Noctis mused. Eileen nodded, before giving him back the music box, and he kept it. He took a deep breath, and rested his arms on the fence.

"Still lingering about? What's wrong? A hunter, unnerved by a few beasts? Heh heh… No matter, without fear in our hearts, we're little different from the beasts themselves."

"No, I'm just afraid for the little girl. If Gascoigne's gone mad…" Noctis dropped off. "His wife, Viola, went looking for him. She forgot the music box, and without it, she wouldn't stand much of a chance."

"Then what are you still doing here?" Eileen asked sharply. "Enough trembling in your boots. A hunter must hunt."

"Yeah. I should go and check on them instead of staying here and guessing," he admitted. "See you around, Eileen."

Something was wrong with the people of Yharnam, he realised. It shamed him to admit that it had taken him the better part of a week to recognise it, but there was something deeply unsettling about them. Beasts had a sort of damp stink, smelling pungently of iron and something else he couldn't recognise.

Even the various presumably human Hunters he had run into had the same sort of stench, but it was more drawn out, more faint. Their inhuman stature was also a key point to note, with their entire bodies looking like they had been stretched out, so tall and lanky they were.

Even the city itself smelled like that, a miasma that seemed to totally envelop every square centimetre of everything.

Everything just seemed so… unnatural. The sewers has been as sprawling as he had expected, with giant rats and the occasional massive boar infesting them. He had also been attacked by seemingly drowned corpses that had tried to swarm him and drown him in the sewer water, but at least his Molotovs were still effective down there.

Granted, he had died a few times, once to a massive flaming ball that some bastards had had the idea of rolling along a bridge, but other than that things had gone rather well, so he was whistling to himself happily when he walked into their Tomb of Oedon.

That had probably been why things had gone so badly when they did.

He observed a man, garbed in the manner of a priest, wearing long black robes and a wide-brimmed hat that stank heavily of the beastly stench, bring an alarmingly large axe down on a clearly dead beast.

The blade of the axe cut into the flesh, before the man yanked it out with a sickening squelch. Then, he brought it down again, repeating the process over and over until the beast was cut into grisly pieces under him.

"Beasts all over the shop…" He grimly muttered, stepping away from his prey. Then he started to turn to look at Noctis, who realised that the man's eyes were actually covered with bandages. "You'll be one of them, sooner or later…" He snarled.

The man bared his teeth, rather like a predatory animal, and again a name emerged from the depths of his mind.

 _Father Gascoigne_.

He hesitated for a bit, processing the name before it fell into place. This was the young girl's father. However, that hesitation gave the now named Gascoigne time to politely greet him with his axe to his skull. The last thing that Noctis felt was his head being split in two, and then nothing.

/-/

He stirred in his sleep. Sooner or later, his intermittent waking would probably escalate to full blown sleep deprivation and the resulting fatigue, but as if to make up for it he apparently had a higher quality of sleep nowadays.

He checked the pockets of his pyjamas, and sure enough, he felt both the music box and the two badges he had been fortunate enough to find.

Somehow, reality and his dreams had crossed over enough for non-consumable items to appear in both, but luckily his blood vials, quicksilver bullets, Molotovs and the like had not followed suit. It would have been awkward to explain why he had more than twenty vials of blood in his locker.

Speaking of the blood, he had normally injected it intravenously like Iosefka had told him to, but once he had tried simply drinking it. It was a dream, after all, so what harm could come of it?

It turned out that it tasted disgusting, possessing a cloying sweetness that seemed to stick on his tongue. He had promptly leaped off a bridge to his temporary death, just to get the taste out of his mouth.

Anyway, what to do with Father Gascoigne? Clearly the man was out of his mind, but maybe the music box might be able to bring him back from the brink?

/-/

He entered the Tomb of Oedon again, clearing away the same barrier of fog that had formed at the bridge where he had met the Cleric Beast.

This time, Gascoigne skipped the introductory speech and instead lunged at him with his axe. He sidestepped the man, barely avoiding the uppercut that Gascoigne swung at his neck. Then, he fished out the music box and started to turn the handle.

A soft tinkling melody began to play and when Gascoigne heard it, he just stopped attacking. Hell, he stopped doing anything except clutch his head in pain and mutter to himself.

"What have I done? Oh, what have I done?" The older Hunter whispered to himself, before recovering. He brought his gun to point at Noctis, before pulling the trigger and sending a spray of buckshot at his head.

Somehow, Noctis dodged and the tombstone that was behind him shattered into pieces of masonry. He played the music box again, eliciting the same response again. Noctis dodged another string of attacks from Gascoigne, all the while keeping his distance, and for luck he decided to play the music box a third time.

This time, however, things turned out differently. A shockwave knocked Noctis's feet from underneath him, and when he turned to look at Gascoigne he could stare in shock. The man's clothing had ripped and tore where it would not fit his much larger form, exposing grey fur. His axe and pistol lay abandoned on the ground, replaced by long, sharp claws.

" _The things you hunt, they're not beasts. They're people_ ," a voice rang out in his head.

It sounded like an old war veteran, grizzled and gruff, but Noctis could not name who it belonged to. It felt as if he had forgotten the man's name, and it was just out of reach.

He dashed forward, snatching up the pistol from the ground. He pointed it at the beast that was once Gascoigne, emptying shell after shell into the massive brute that was advancing on him, turning its torso into nothing short of mincemeat with the amount of buckshot he sent at it, but it still did nothing. A swipe of the beast's claws sent him sprawling to the ground, and then it went in for the kill, tearing his prone form to shreds.

He woke up again, breaking out in cold sweat. That death had been remarkably painful, as being ripped to pieces should be, but now he didn't have a plan to save Gascoigne. He brooded silently.

His only hope, the music box, had failed, and all there was left to do was to grant the hunter his well deserved rest. He silently apologised to the little girl, before nodding off once again.

He wondered about Gascoigne. Would that be what he would become, in time? Nothing but a beast?

He failed to notice Carmine staring at him with rapt interest.

Somehow, he still had Gascoigne's pistol with him when he next materialised in Yharnam. Honestly, it was less a pistol and more a sawn-off shotgun, which was useful in the densely packed streets, as often a close range shot would either stagger an assailant enough for him to pull off a visceral or they would just send them flying off into the distance.

As it were, a proper headshot would pulp the skull of anything short of that damn sewer pig that had quite literally swallowed him whole. This time, he unsheathed his rapier in full knowledge that there would be no peaceful solution to this conundrum.

For the third time that night, Gascoigne leapt at him with his axe before bringing it down with a thunderclap that dislodged untold years' worth of sepulchral dust as he dodged it. He stabbed Gascoigne in the back, eliciting a spurt of too thick blood, before slashing him in the ribs.

However, he then saw ribbons of gore burst out of his own side, replaced by an axe blade larger than his own head. He stumbled back, his ribs on fire, and then Gascoigne shot him point blank in the chest. The impact sent Noctis flying into a gravestone, with his armour thankfully taking most of the impact, and taking the opportunity of the brief respite he used a blood vial. The injury knitted itself shut, and he rose again.

He lunged, running Gascoigne through on his rapier, but Gascoigne kicked him away before hacking into his shoulder with his axe. Noctis backstepped, holstering the shotgun-pistol and injecting himself with another blood vial while blasting away at the crazed Hunter with the transformed gun-rapier.

Most of the time, he flinched when the hollow-point slugs punched into his body and expanded within him, but he didn't flinch nearly enough for Noctis to effectively keep him at bay. He extended the blade again, before swiping at Gascoigne's gut. Ribbons of foul scarlet blood sprayed outwards, and Gascoigne fell onto one knee. Noctis, feeling that inhuman strength in his arm once more, punched his entire hand into the Hunter's chest cavity before ripping it out.

Gascoigne slid backwards and Noctis honestly thought that he had killed him, at least until he got up.

"Ooh, what's that smell…" the man growled. "The sweet blood, ooh, it sings to me! It's enough to make a man sick." He then yanked the haft of his axe outwards, revealing that it was actually a telescoping handle.

The oversized blade now made sense, Noctis realised, because what Gascoigne was holding right now was essentially a halberd. He recognised the increased strength, range and leverage that the halberd offered, but what he had failed to factor in was Gascoigne himself.

His opponent was larger, stronger, more powerful and more experienced for him, which meant that when he brought the blade downwards onto his right shoulder, he brought it down much too fast for Noctis to follow. The blade cleaved straight through the armour and greatcoat sleeve protecting it, right down through muscle and bone, cutting his right arm off in one swing of the axe.

His rapier clattered to the ground, still in the final death grip of his right hand. Noctis stared in shock, knocked onto his back by the force of the hit, before pulling out the pistol and trying to blast Gascoigne in the face. However, Gascoigne used his own pistol to shoot it out of his hand, before releasing it and placing it against his skull.

"Too proud to show your true face, eh?" He wondered out loud, more to himself than to his quarry. "But a sporting hunt it was…"

Then, he pulled the trigger, and Noctis's world cut to nothing.

Was Gascoigne toying with him the whole time, playing with his food before he consumed it ravenously? He would never know.

/-/

Noctis was awakened by the sensation of shaking. He opened his eyes, taking in the sight of Carmine Rienhardt looming over him, her hands on his shoulders.

Carmine, despite being probably the most durable living thing he had met, turned out to be surprisingly lithe and graceful out of her armour, almost elfin in appearances despite being pale to the point of seeming anemic.

It would certainly have been a very welcoming sight had he not just realised what she was saying.

"Come on, wake up! Argent, we are nearly late!" She yelled.

Damn Gascoigne, he may have been a good father but to hell with him for almost making him late for the trip to Forever Fall.

Lapis was hurriedly pulling on the form-fitting white bodysuit with black highlights that was to fit underneath her armour. Icarus was putting on his usual tweed ensemble, his green ghillie cloak placed strategically nearby to be pulled on after the brown jacket was properly buttoned up. From close association, Noctis was pretty sure that his sniper teammate would wear tweed into hell if he so chose.

Noctis practically leapt out of bed, rushing off to the bathroom to settle his basic hygiene before getting ready for the field trip.

The music box laid forgotten on his bedside table.

/-/

"Auxilia? Daedalus? What the hell? I've never heard of those two before," Cardin growled. He was still on edge from the confrontation on the roof the night before, but still... this new information made him nervous. The table creaked as he put his head in his hands, his elbows doing their best to transfer the weight of his upper body onto the table.

Sky whimpered, while Russel began to shake. Russel spoke up first. "You haven't heard of Daedalus? He's basically the White Fang's very own angel of death. An assassin so good that he has to leave evidence _on purpose_ to prove that he was even there at all. He's an urban legend, the Fallen Angel. They say he's even got the Minotaur on his leash, but apparently he dropped off the radar a few years ago. Not before he racked up a considerable body count on the way down, though..."

Cardin processed the data for a bit, before turning to Sky. "The Auxilia isn't as well known because she doesn't really do anything much outside of aiding the Legion's core in Vacuo and managing internal affairs, but my dad knows some about her since he's in the Legion himself. Hell, she's the reason he's been trying his whole life to keep me on the straight and narrow. Apparently, they only set her on the biggest of jobs, like taking out external branches of Legion extremists that have gone rogue. They say she's taken on entire armoured columns by herself, Challenger MBTs and all, and _won_. They say she's _immortal_ , that she's some sort of avenging armoured juggernaut. In all honesty, we didn't stand much of a chance from day one."

Cardin slammed the table with his fist. "So you're telling me that since the Auxilia is here in Beacon, we now have to assume that Daedalus is here as well?" He yelled. "What is this, some sort of tit-for-tat move? Great! Now we're pinned between the two biggest paramilitary forces barring the four kingdoms, and we just had to get into the damn crossfire so perfectly that both sides might be gunning for us now! Fuck!"

His teammates flinched, but their expressions told him that they agreed at least. Potentially having the Legion's hammer working with the White Fang's chisel would be really bad for them, especially since they had been a conveniently placed chunk of stone that had stubbed the toe of the sculptor. Cardin sighed. "You know what? Let's deal with this shit after the field trip."

"Hold on," Dove said, raising one hand. The other was frantically pecking at the keyboard of their room CPU, which was hooked up to all their scrolls. "I've uploaded anything I could find about Auxilia and Daedalus on the CCT onto our scrolls, just in case. By the way, apparently Cainhurst gave the school a gift. It's this downloadable AI called 'GEMINI' that's interlinked with all of the other scrolls and computers in Beacon. What this means is that we can now look at our teammates' aura levels as well as our own, as well as do other things on the go like accept missions, receive live updates or generally get our admin stuff done."

"Nice," Russel said. "What else does it do? That seems a bit boring, but it's useful at least."

"Well, it plays a mean game of chess," Dove said, with a faint smile on his face. "Somehow it checkmated me in seventeen moves just now. It even got through my signature 'Belkan Defence'. Quaint. But I'll beat it eventually, I'm sure."

/-/

Pyrrha polished the point of Miló, turning it so that it gleamed in the light, before checking the structural quality of Akoúo. Noticing a few scratches left over from Initiation, she used her cloth to buff them out. Finally, she transformed Miló into its rifle form, cocking the semi-automatic bolt before raising it to check the sights.

Unfortunately, the moment she pointed it upwards, she has inadvertently set her sights on Jaune. Jaune, for his part, jumped back in surprise and raised his hands in surrender. What was more worrying was the absolute terror on his face, not at her, but at someone else.

His face was pale and his eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep.

"What's wrong, Jaune?" Pyrrha asked, lowering her rifle.

"I dunno… it's just…" Jaune sighed. "It's your brother. He scares the shit out of me."

Pyrrha stared at him before asking, "What did he do?" The tone of the question connotated a sort of deep exasperation only brought about by years of association with the man responsible.

In the background, Jaune watched as Noctis withdrew a long dagger with a too-long crossguard out of his locker, before transforming it into what looked like the unholy lovechild of a sawn-off shotgun and a flintlock pistol. He broke open the chamber, inspecting the mechanisms within, before closing it back up and transforming it back into its dagger form.

Then he pressed a sliding switch on the handle, causing the side pieces of the blade to split open and become blade trappers. He slid the switch back, and the trident main gauche folded up back into the form of a dagger.

With his new dagger-gun offhand weapon strapped in its sheath at his right side, and his laser-rapier at his left hip, he presented a heavily armed and _very_ dangerous figure.

Jaune gulped.

"He literally held Cardin over the edge of the roof last night, threatening to drop him," he blurted out. "Cardin hasn't bothered me since, but I feel that what he did was _way_ too much."

Pyrrha stared at him, before nodding. She grabbed his shoulders, before replying. "Trust me when I tell you that all my brother understands is ' _too much_ '. He lost his original family and his arm in Mountain Glenn, just as Ren and Nora lost their families in Kuroyuri. Surely you've heard Ren tell us his and Nora's story?

"Yeah, both of us did..."

"My brother had it worse," she said, gripping Jaune so hard that it started to hurt. "So, _so_ much worse..."

"What do you mean?"

"He was rescued by a Huntress who died in front of him, protecting him from Grimm. Then he got rescued again, this time by my dad who took him in. He imprinted on me, his sister, as his main source of emotional support. To that end, he does literally nothing else but keep those he cares about safe because he trusts _nobody else_ to do the job correctly."

"Okay...?"

"His semblance slowly destroys the memories that _makes him who he is_ every time he uses it, but he _tries_ , Jaune. My brother is nothing but loyal. _Nothing_."

Pyrrha moved in closer towards him, green eyes staring into his blue eyes with what looked like anger. "He has only us left, Jaune. You _want_ to be the hero because you feel like that's expected of you. He _is_ the hero, to me at least, not because he wants to be but because that's the only way his humanity can survive. His semblance, his paranoia, his trust issues, they can and _will_ tear him apart if he doesn't have this. He needs me to centre him as much as I need him to be at my side."

She sighed deeply, before pushing him away. "You don't get to become the hero just because you want to, Jaune. Oftentimes, ambition leads you down the wrong path no matter how good your intentions are. You got into Beacon for free, while the rest of us had to struggle our way in. Noctis is struggling to stay as Noctis, and plus, he has his own team to manage, so please forgive him if he gets a little... _intense_ at times."

They were interrupted by Noctis coming over and tapping Pyrrha on the shoulder. "Morning, sis, and good morning to her fearless leader as well. Would it be possible for your team to help us hide away a stockpile of the sap Professor Peach is having us collect?"

"Wait, aren't we supposed to give _everything_ to Professor Peach?" Pyrrha replied suspiciously.

"Lapis and Carmine somehow came up with a recipe to make some sort of elixir with the sap after flipping through that book we found in the tomb, and maybe if you four help us we'll give you guys a cut of the product," he said, putting on his best snake-oil salesman impression.

"So... you're planning to make moonshine."

" Maybe? Nah, I'm kidding. Goodwitch would kill us if we started distributing it in the school, but who said we can't sell it in Vale? Junior owes me a favour anyways…" Noctis mused.

Jaune stared in disbelief while Pyrrha jabbed her finger back at Nora and Ren, the latter of which was struggling to carry a collection of large clay jars. "I'm pretty sure Ren and Nora would be more useful in that regard than us. Why not ask them?" She asked, smiling as she did.

Before Noctis made to move on to their teammates, he turned to Jaune. He impaled him on that baleful gaze of void-black eyes, before asking, "Did Cardin give you any trouble after I left?" That tone again… it made Jaune's spine tingle.

"N-no?" He stammered.

"Good," he said, before walking away. Jaune could have sworn that Noctis was more than a bit bipolar, but never mind that. He watched as Noctis waved goodbye to his sister, before pulling on his gas mask. As he turned back to Pyrrha, he heard the loud clicks of Noctis strapping on his helmet and attaching the armour plate that protected his face.

"See? That's why he scares me. He doesn't even try to be scary, just because he already does it naturally." He explained, but Pyrrha was having none of it.

"No, that's the brother I know and lovingly tolerate. That's what I want to see from him. You'll learn eventually, fearless leader, what it takes to be a hero," Pyrrha said, before grinning at him. It was not a nice grin. "My brother and I will help you with that, whatever it takes."

Jaune's scroll buzzed. A message from Goodwitch which he promptly read, mostly to change the subject. "We lift off in fifteen minutes," he read aloud for the benefit of his team. "Get ready in five. We need to get ready to bring up our cargo."

/-/

Red leaves crunched under Icarus's boots. The scenery was nice, yes, but Goodwitch had told them that there were Grimm infesting the areas. Might as well stay alert.

Legend told of a massive King Taijitu, larger than the Amity Express that connected the floating city of Atlas to the rest of the world, that slumbered somewhere in Forever Fall. The sap from these trees had once been a valued commodity that was quite literally worth its own weight in gold for confectioners and brewers who would utilise the sap's unique flavour for their own crafts, to make alcohol or expensive candies or whatnot. The point is that since these trees only grew in this one forest despite the concerted efforts of horticulturists through the ages, people used to flock here to harvest the sap for trade and other purposes. It was rather like the gold rush of antiquity, coupled with the current vocation of truffle hunting.

However, this sap rush was stopped in its tracks by this Taijitu, Janus. It, having been named after the old pagan god of beginnings, gates, doorways, passages, and endings - among others - as having a snake the size of a high-speed train barrelling down on you could certainly appear to be some sort of divine punishment, had devoured sap collectors incessantly as only an ambush predator could, killing them by the hundreds before the prospectors eventually backed off. Some people had declared Janus dead, especially with Beacon Academy so close to Forever Fall, but others had sworn that it was still alive.

Whatever the answer was, Icarus certainly didn't want to find out.

The muffled crunch of hapless leaves being crushed to powder approached behind him, heralding the arrival of his partner. He turned to see Lapis's gauntleted hand at her ear, fiddling with the comm bead there. The comm beads had been his idea, as since they were a team they may as well be able to work as a cohesive team.

"That's weird," Lapis remarked, after fixing her comm bead. "Everyone else has already run into some Grimm, but we haven't. You know, Beowolves, Ursa, things like that. Basic shit. But there's nothing here."

Something flashed on his HUD, and after he checked it he came to the conclusion that the inbuilt sensors were broken. They were detecting some sort of seismic disturbance a few kilometres away, and approaching fast.

"Is it just me, or is it my armour's sensors going to hell again?" Lapis suddenly asked. "Because they're detecting something coming fast, and it looks big."

They both paused. "How big was that Taijitu that people said was living here?" Lapis asked.

"About as big as the Amity Express," Icarus replied.

"Well, shit," they said in unison.

Icarus's HUD started to blare a proximity alarm and before any of them could react, a massive black shape burst out of the ground next to them. It was the giant black head of a King Taijitu, larger than a train engine and snapping at the empty air where it thought they were at. Lapis stared in shock at the massive creature before her, while Icarus raised his rifle and lined up the Taijitu's black head in his scope before opening fire.

One shot rang out, ricocheting off the scales before he worked the bolt and sent another round at the snake but only to the same effect. Concerningly, two of his .338 Lapua rounds, that were usually enough to punch through even the heaviest of body armour, did nothing but plink off of the giant snake's scales. Even more concerningly, Icarus's semblance failed to detect any weak points he could exploit via sniper fire. Janus slid back into the ground, causing the ground to shake almost like a minor earthquake.

Lapis swore, hefting the laser mode of her weapon while Icarus leapt into the air and hovered.

"I can't damage it!" He yelled, the thrusters mounted to his lower legs boosting him into the air. "Lapis, when it comes up next, burn it!"

"Yeah, but where the hell is it?" She shouted back. A few trees dislodged by the Taijitu's emergence fell to the ground, and before long the snake's black head burst out of the ground to engulf them.

"It can't detect us by sight or smell, since it's underground and we're both fully covered, so how does it know where it are?" Icarus wondered aloud, letting his voice carry into the comms. "I'll draw it out. Ready, Lapis?"

"Ready. What's your plan?" She asked. He answered her by landing onto a clearing in the trees. If his theory was correct…

"Icarus… what are you doing?" Lapis raised her voice in alarm. He was proven correct by the tremors that began to shake everything around him. He leapt to the side, just before the space he had previously been occupying was replaced by a snapping set of black jaws that could have easily swallowed a tank whole.

"It's sensing us by vibration!" He hollered through the comms, before even that was drowned out by the all too familiar thrum of Lapis's laser.

He heard "[LASER DISCHARGING]" echo much too late into his ear, as a massive sky blue beam of energy slammed into Janus. Great gouts of glowing slag burst out of the point of contact, as the laser burned its way through the Grimm's scale armour. Steam billowed from the massive charred wound but even that seemed to be nothing more than a flesh wound to the ancient King Taijitu, which simply spat black ichor at them before retreating back into the earth.

"Well, that was a thing," Lapis stated. "You still alive, buddy? Because that was one hell of a gambit."

"I'm fine," he replied, before raising his rifle and shooting the ground of a hill more than a kilometre away. A spray of dirt bloomed skyward, and the rumbling under their feet slowly moved away. "This should get Janus off our tracks for now, but let's go and get the sap back to the Bullhead before it comes back."

Lapis huffed. "Hopefully Noctis and Carmine are having a better time at this," she mused, before lifting up the crate of sap-filled jars that she had discarded in the fight. "That elixir Carmine came up with had better knock me out after the first shot."

"It may not be alcohol, after all," Icarus mused. "If you ask me, that book you picked up seems a bit sketchy. I mean, there was something-"

"Wait," Lapis interrupted. When he turned to look at her, Icarus saw her sifting through the remnants of one of the trees that had been pulverised by Janus. "I think I see something."

Then, she pulled out something white. Icarus wasn't close enough to see what it was, but when he moved closer to see what it was, he couldn't help but recoil in surprise. What Lapis was holding in her gauntlet was a White Fang mask, the superior make and the red markings embossed on the front stating that it had once been owned by a lieutenant. He swore under his breath. If this was what he thought it was...

"You know what this is?" Lapis asked, her tone suddenly becoming much more grim.

"A White Fang mask," Icarus replied calmly but concernedly. "Lieutenant's personal one, from the looks of it."

"Is this yours?"

"Nope. I only worked with the Fang on a long-term contractual basis," he explained. "I did the job they asked me to do, then they paid me and left me alone to grow my cabbages. Never joined up officially."

"Growing cabbages?" Lapis stared at him incredulously. "Seriously?"

"Well, how else was I supposed to earn a living? I left after they made me do one job too many, remember?"

"Guys, focus," Noctis's voice cut in over the comms. "This mask means either of two things. Either a lieutenant deserted the Fang and decided to seek refuge in Beacon, which is unlikely at best since high ranking members rarely if ever desert their faction, or we have a spy on our hands. I'm more inclined to believe the latter."

"So, we're hunting moles now. Great," Lapis grumbled.

"We should report back to base. Give me the mask, Lapis. I don't want you to accidentally break it or something," he said hurriedly. He grabbed the mask, clipping it to his belt, before his jump boots flared into action with a kickback of hot air.

"See you at the extraction point!" Icarus shouted over his shoulder, as he leapt into the air and flew off into the distance.

He only barely heard Lapis's protesting reply of "Oh, come on! That's just unfair!"

/-/

This was it. Noctis laid back on his bed, fiddling with his scroll. Carmine had set hers up to broadcast onto the monitor of the room computer for the benefit of everyone else, but he wanted to see every detail of their first mission briefing. There was a countdown on his screen, slowly ticking away the last minute to their briefing.

"So this is it, huh? Our first mission. I'm still wondering why Ozpin is keeping it all covered up. I mean, we can't be going that deep yet," he muttered, putting down his scroll to fiddle with his inbuilt flamethrower. Carmine looked at him dubiously. Did he have something on his face?

"Probably because Ozpin already knew about the spy in Beacon. Didn't you see how he didn't even blink when we told him about the mask?" Icarus answered, sitting cross-legged on his top of a bunk bed. Rather amusingly, he had a pair of reading glasses on. "Probably we just answered some questions he had, and that was it."

"So what's our assignment gonna be? To hunt down this spy?" Lapis asked, steamed causally in another of the chairs. "If that's so, then you guys are gonna have to lead me along. Mostly, the Legion just ordered an airstrike on where we thought the perp was. A lot of collateral damage, but it gets the job done."

"Probably, but later. The countdown's almost up," Carmine said, elbows leaning on her knees in a wooden chair at the desk in the corner.

Just as she finished, the countdown image on the screen transitioned into the black silhouette of a human head.

"Good evening, Team NICL. After analysing footage taken from cameras across the city, the case is clear; Roman Torchwick has allied himself and his assets with the Vale cell of the White Fang, led by a highly unstable man named Adam Taurus, better known as the Minotaur."

There was a photo montage of the two targets, and both of them were at least slightly familiar from the news coverage - mostly negative - that they and their actions warranted.

"With equal parts of guts and guile, Roman Torchwick runs a multi-billion lien criminal empire. The word is, the charismatic yet self-serving criminal kingpin is hell bent on upping his game from stealing from Dust shops to robbing the Schnee Dust Company itself. The White Fang were presumed to have allied themselves with Torchwick for the purposes of obtaining stolen Dust, which is Roman's specialty. At least, it was presumed until we obtained this."

The montage of security footage that had showed Roman and Adam interacting in various locations cut off to a shot caught in the gap between two shipping containers of Roman's gangsters loading what looked like Paladin mechanised battlesuits into a cargo airship for transport.

"This shot has shed new insight on the White Fang's purpose in Vale. Now, we can determine that Adam is preparing for some sort of armed offensive, the purpose of which is unknown."

Icarus and Lapis both leaned back in surprise. Noctis himself couldn't lean back because he was on his back already, but he still got his fair share of shock and awe. Carmine unsurprisingly just looked confused.

"Clearly, the two men have struck a deal. Consequently, if we can cripple Torchwick's criminal network, we can severely limit the ability of the White Fang to obtain any more supplies for whatever they are planning. But to do so, we need to know exactly what is going on. Therefore your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to infiltrate the operation under the oversight of either Adam's side or Roman's, figure out what is going on and what is being planned, and to sabotage their efforts such that whatever happens runs contrary to their objective," the headmaster's voice said.

Noctis was meanwhile trying to process the mental calculus required to plan the inevitable infiltration operation.

"Finally, we are obligated to retire both Adam Taurus and Roman Torchwick to contain the damage both might inflict on Vale, and to ensure no repeat of whatever they might be planning."

This time, all four of them had matching expressions of shock, but differing simultaneously. An assassination mission, Noctis mulled with a smile on his face, was just right up his alley.

"All relevant intel has been uploaded onto your burner scrolls. I will leave you to prepare."

With that, the message shorted itself out.

Noctis spoke up first. "Damn it. Looks like we're jumping into the deep end in this one. Luckily, I have a cunning plan," he said, smirking to himself, before pulling out his scroll. "Our good friend Jaune has somehow made contact with a member of Roman's network, and thus we're gonna use that dealer as our insertion point. We sell our services to Roman as mercenaries, and hopefully he'll trust us enough to let us have a place at the table so to speak. The rest should be easy enough."

Carmine was already shovelling through the intel, trying to learn things that were common knowledge to the other three of them.

"Wasn't the Minotaur your old spotter?" Lapis asked, turning to Icarus. "I mean, I'm pretty sure that he only became regarded as his own person after you left."

"Yes, he was. Just as screwed up back then as he was now, and he always had this unhealthy attraction to his subordinate that was _just_ pushing the half plus seven rule," the former assassin answered.

"So he's a pedophile as well as a zealot," Noctis cut in. "Great. Next thing we know he's trying to recruit kids with free candy and trying to get them into a white van. From what I've seen and heard of Roman, he doesn't seem as bad as Adam. Apparently he sticks by this 'honour among thieves' code or something like that, so I figured that it'll be safer to stick with him first."

"Yes, sir," Carmine replied. "Now, we have classes for the next few days so... could we get the dealer to meet us this Saturday?"

"Yes, I can. Well, as soon as I get Jaune to give me his contact," Noctis said. He sighed, before pulling his blanket over himself. "Now, I'm going to sleep, so if y'all have any questions save them for tomorrow. Goodnight."

He pulled his blindfold over his eyes. Gascoigne's situation couldn't be helped, but surely the situation couldn't be that bad. After all, Viola must still be alive… right? He certainly hoped so, otherwise he honestly didn't know what he would do. Never mind that now. Why stay here and worry over possibilities, when he could take the chance to determine the outcome for himself? He drifted off to sleep, and the rank depths of Yharnam, with hope still on his lips.

 **(Yes, Icarus knows very well who our spy is. I think you can probably guess who it is... Anyway, I've decided to split up the Gascoigne arc othewise this chapter would become just a wall of text.)**


	12. Close Friends, Closer Enemies

Noctis watched Jaune and Carmine spar, part of him pitying the poor guy because the spar seemed to be so one-sided in his teammate's favour while another part of him watched in vindictive amusement. He had gotten to know his own teammates, as well as team RWBY and team JNPR, a lot better over the past months. Jaune honestly seemed like a nice guy overall, and Noctis would have been fine with it if not for the fact that his sister was practically obsessed with him. Sure, he was oblivious enough to not have noticed it _yet_ , but what if he eventually caught on and decided to take advantage of that fact?

He fretted over the possibility for a moment before dismissing it. Hah. It was more like it was his duty as a fellow man to protect the guy. If things went on as they were, sooner or later his sister would just shove him into a secluded spot and have her way with him. He wasn't ready to be an uncle yet…

Jaune dodged the sword swing that would have lobotomised him, at the very least, before retreating and cowering behind Crocea Mors. At least against Carmine his shield actually meant something barring her insanely powerful beam-gun tumour arm, or whatever she called that giant mass of many-eyed _nope_ , while against himself it was only an invitation to teleport behind him and backstab like a scrub. However, it wasn't much of an improvement in Noctis's opinion.

"Come on, Arc, where is that bloodlust that your family is supposed to have?" Carmine jabbed. "Stop hiding behind your shield and start fighting!"

His shield was then smashed to the side by what was frankly the most hardcore weapon Noctis had ever seen. It was true that Cardin's mace was bigger, as if he was compensating for something, but Carmine's sword looked like it was something that a _demon_ would refuse to use because it was too dangerous. The lengthened two-handed form of the blade, quite literally a blade-shaped hunk of writhing flesh and eyes, promptly smashed into Jaune's jaw in a brutal diagonal uppercut. The impact lifted him into the air, and soon he landed on his back in a wincing heap. Carmine walked over, standing over his prone form.

"Alright, I admit that I may have hit you a bit too hard," she said, sounding not the least bit apologetic before grabbing his hand and yanking him to his feet. "Whose turn is it now to beat the new guy to a pulp?"

"The honour would be mine," Noctis declared cheerfully, raising his hand and smiling maliciously at the horrified look on the face of JNPR's fearless leader. "But it's getting late, and you've basically killed off the last of his aura. Probably traumatised him as well, what with the nightmare fuel you were swinging at his head. We'll continue tomorrow, but not before I tell Jaune what he did wrong."

"Okay, so where did I screw up?" Jaune asked despondently. Good. He was learning.

Noctis ticked off the all too numerous reasons one by one with his fingers. "Firstly, you fight with too much defense and too little offense. Not a problem if you're tanking for teammates that can dish out more damage but can't take it in return, but if you're alone it's not a good idea. Heavy weaponry like Carmine's LMG or Lapis's laser, which I may add is absolutely _bullshit_ , will make short work of you."

Jaune winced. "Yeah, I get the idea," he admitted.

"Secondly, you depend too much on your shield. Sure, against lighter attacks like mine it'll hold up fine, but what if you're the target of the unstoppable force and immovable object that is Lapis? I'm pretty sure that when she gets into a proper lance charge with all those rockets on her weapon and armour, she's faster than some aircraft. Do you really want to tank a lance that's travelling at nearly Mach 1? I didn't think so."

Jaune nodded. At least he had some sense left.

"Now, you actually aren't that bad," Pyrrha cut in. "Your stance has improved, so you're more balanced. Your defence is top-notch, but now we need to work on your offense. We'll train that tomorrow, but now we all need to get some rest."

Noctis turned to leave with Jaune and Pyrrha, but Carmine grabbed his shoulder before he could walk off.

"You two go on ahead first," she called out. "My leader and I have something to talk about.

"Are you sure?" Pyrrha asked, but the two of them were already on the way out.

"I am as sure as I am sure that I serve the one true monarch," Carmine replied.

As soon as the two teammates had left, Noctis turned to Carmine. "What the hell was that for?" He asked.

"As I said, I needed to talk to you about something," she maintained, resting her giant blade on the ground. "Namely, your dream."

Noctis stared at her. "What have you found out?"

"You have been muttering in your sleep… something about a city called Yharnam."

His eyes widened. At last, a breakthrough!

"Tell me, what do you know of Yharnam?" He muttered pleadingly. "Please, tell me something. Anything."

"The city lost to the Dream? My father came from there, long ago. But what I am more concerned about is your blood."

"My blood?" He asked concernedly. Surely the blood he had imbibed wasn't harmful... it healed him, after all.

"The Old Blood runs in your veins, emboldened by the echoes of bloodshed. You're a Hunter, it is clear as day," she declared. "There _is_ another sign, but I am not sure how to describe it…"

"What is it?" He prodded.

"Do you know how when a battle has taken place, you can smell the cordite and gunpowder even years afterwards?" She asked him. "How the stench of shed blood and dead men never quite gets washed off the soil of a battleground?"

He nodded silently. He knew that all too well...

"You smell… like the moon. There is no other way to say it. It boggles my mind, and there is no logical way that it would make sense, but you smell like moonlight."

Noctis by this point had already lost any comprehension he had had of what she was saying. What did she mean, he smelled like moonlight?

"You are a Hunter, and a Paleblood one at that," she said, before smiling. "You may be trapped in Yharnam, but there might be a way in which I can help you."

"How? By helping me kill this deranged hunter that's been kicking my ass for the past week?" He snapped.

"No. I cannot interfere or intervene in your Hunt," she explained, the eyes on her sword looking at him angrily, before hesitating. "Pursue the echoes of blood, and I will channel them into your strength," she finally uttered. "You will hunt beasts… and I will be here for you, to embolden your sickly spirit."

Then, she grabbed his hand. Noctis let her. "Let the echoes become your strength. Let me stand close. Now, close your eyes…"

He did. Suddenly, he felt a peculiar warm feeling course through his body. It seemed to concentrate itself on his arms, legs and head before dissipating.

"How did I do?" He heard Carmine ask. "That was my first time doing it, after all…"

He flexed his hands. He felt stronger somehow, more robust. He felt invigorated.

"You did well, I think. Thanks," he cheerfully said. He was more distracted by how Carmine looked in the pale moonlight that lit the rooftop. She looked stunning, even more than usual. More regal, captivating and somehow… doll-like, in a way. He shrugged the feeling off, before his teammate turned to look him straight in the eye. Hopefully she hadn't seen him ogling her...

"Before you return to that thrice damned city, promise me that you will remember this. Fear the Old Blood. By the gods, Noctis, remember this. Remember this, that despite all the horrors and abominations you may meet on this Hunt, that the very Old Blood that heals you is the greatest peril of all."

"How do you know so much?" He finally asked, noting the point about the Old Blood.

"I was born in the Dreamlands. That is where Cainhurst is," she replied, somewhat hesitantly.

"Wow. Sounds cool. Maybe you could bring me there one day?" He asked, winking at her before breaking out into gentle laughter when she suddenly looked flustered. "Nah, I'm kidding. See you tomorrow, I guess."

If he had walked just a little bit slower, he would have heard Carmine have the final say.

"And so, the hunt begins again," she whispered, looking up to the shattered moon. "Even so, I wish you luck, good hunter. May you find your worth in Yharnam."

/-/

Apparently he could teleport now in Yharnam, after the improvements Carmine had given him. Granted, he could only teleport as far as he could probably roll, and he didn't leave a clone behind every time he did as a decoy, but it was still a major improvement.

He was now able to dodge attacks much faster than normal, effectively flash-stepping past most threats and backstabbing those he couldn't. This meant that he had wasted practically no time at all getting back to the Tomb of Oedon.

He teleported away from Gascoigne's customary opening lunge, reappearing behind the crazed hunter. Then, he pulled out his pistol and shot the hunter in the back. The buckshot slammed into his back, staggering the man with a shower of foul blood. Noctis moved in, punching into Gascoigne's back with his right hand before ripping out with a visceral spray of blood.

"And fuck you too, bitch," Noctis exclaimed. "I can't even begin to count the number of times you did that same shit to me."

He promptly received his retribution by Gascoigne pistol-whipping in the teeth. He teleported away, before spitting out what must have been half of his dental structure along with a lot of blood. He promptly used a blood vial to repair the damage, subjecting himself to the utterly alien sensation of feeling his teeth grow back out of his jawbone. Then, he teleported back into the fray. He materialised inside of Gascoigne's guard, taking the opportunity to run him through with his rapier.

That, at least, elicited a reaction. The deranged Hunter kicked him away, growling as he did, before extending the haft of his axe. Noctis teleported to the side, just missing Gascoigne's axe which slammed down to his left in an attempt to cut him in half. He pulled out his pistol, blasting Gascoigne with a spray of buckshot that interrupted a horizontal swing he was telegraphing. Having staggered the older man, he sheathed his rapier before again punching into Gascoigne's chest cavity. He tore it out with a burst of gore before pulling out his flamesprayer and holding down the trigger. However, it didn't seem to do much. The flames washed over Gascoigne, but refused to ignite his blood-soaked garments.

Noctis swore aloud, realising his stupidity. Gascoigne wasn't a beast _yet_ , so fire wouldn't be any more effective than usual. Luckily, his new ability allowed him to barely dodge a retaliatory shot from Gascoigne's own pistol. He backed away while an idea formed in his head. Then, he decided to act on that idea and pulled out the music box. He turned the crank, eliciting the same reaction from the crazed hunter as before, and while the man was essentially incapacitated he moved in. His rapier flashed in the moonlight, one slashing into the man's neck and the other swipe cutting in between his ribs. He teleported away, causing Gascoigne to miss his retaliatory swing.

"Damned beast!" The Hunter roared. "I'll kill you!"

The battle cry was undercut somewhat by an oil urn shattering on his face and covering him in kerosene.

"You need to chill out for a bit," Noctis snarked. "How about I help you with that?" He asked, before following up with a Molotov. This time, the oil seemed to do the job, Gascoigne's bloodsoaked form bursting into flame that ate away at him.

Noctis raised his hand and flipped off the burning man, before shooting him in the head twice with the transformed gun-rapier. The Hunter stumbled under the force of the slugs punching into his head, before collapsing against a gravestone. Just to be safe, Noctis threw another old urn onto him before pulling out his flamesprayer.

His caution was proven worthwhile when a shockwave of warm displaced air slammed into him. He turned to look at Gascoigne and indeed, the man had once again turned into a beast. The Hunter smiled. Other Hunters might be opponents actually worthy of consideration, but beasts? Beasts were vermin to be slaughtered.

He flipped out the nozzle mechanism of his flamesprayer, pointing it at the transformed man before holding down the trigger and spraying the form of the beast before him that was just starting to rise to its feet with flame. He dodged an overhead slam from the beast, noting just how much the fire was burning it. Honestly, it was if the creature had cotton wool for hair.

Noctis leaned in, cutting open the beast's gut and drawing back in disgusted horror when engorged intestines began to fall out of the opening. He then promptly got a horrible idea, in his opinion, that might actually work. Noctis lunged forward, stabbing the beast that was Gascoigne through the throat with his rapier, while jamming the nozzle of his flamesprayer into the beast's abdominal cavity with his other hand. Then, as the second and last part of his barely thought out plan, he pressed the trigger of the flamesprayer.

Gascoigne seemed to become less of a beast and more of a walking bonfire. It's innards lit on fire all too easily, burning away in a wash of flame that completely enveloped the beast's form. Noctis watched as the monster before him was immolated, and grinned. He honestly didn't know why he was smiling. This… was horrifying. A very small part of him revelled in the bloodshed, but called for yet more blood. The vast majority of him balked in horror, and promptly shut it down.

The still smouldering creature swiped at him with its claws, but missed. He retaliated by slashing the back of its legs, before shooting it in the back. It stumbled under the force of the shot, and Noctis used the opportunity to stab it in the back. He then transformed the weapon while it was still embedded in Gascoigne, before firing the inbuilt gun and using the force of the slug punching into it to push it off.

"Sick creature, may you rest in peace," he whispered. The beast stumbled around to look at him, at least before Noctis stabbed it one last time in where he thought its heart was.

He seemed to have struck true because after a few seconds of silence, the beast collapsed to its knees. Then, it simply turned to stare into his eyes. For the first time since they met, Noctis saw a glimmer of human intelligence in Gascoigne's eyes.

"Forgive me," the fallen Hunter whispered, but to whom Noctis knew not. Then, the beast's form vaporised in an explosion of blood as the Cleric Beast has done.

 _Prey Slaughtered_.

Silently, Noctis apologised to Gascoigne's daughter. He picked up the wide-brimmed hat that had belonged to the man before placing it on a nearby tombstone. Sobered by the realisation that he had killed the father of this world's version of Ruby, he decided to check the numerous corpses strewn around the tomb. His gut seemed to fill with the horrible feeling of dread. He ignored the numerous dead beastmen that littered the area, instead focusing his search on the human corpses. The graveyard itself held only a few old bodies that yielded either blood vials or quicksilver bullets, but somehow he just felt that there was a fresher corpse on a nearby roof.

He stepped up onto the roof. There was only a single corpse there, that of an uninfected woman. He knelt down, pushing her onto her back to check the pulse and examine the body. However, the more important detail was what was on her chest. A bright red, beautiful ruby brooch. He stepped back in slowly dawning horror, and slowly intensifying despair.

"Fuck," he whispered. Noctis then proceeded to examine the still warm body, which couldn't have been more than an hour old, and began to sob. Any jubilation he had gotten from finally defeating Gascoigne was now completely gone. He'd quite literally missed his eleventh hour chance to save Rose's family, because _he_ fucked up. _He_ arrived too late to save them. _He_ ruined the lives of this family. He gently pulled off the brooch, putting it in his pocket before he sat down and wept.

He got up soon enough, however. Despair had morphed into cold rage. The fog that had blocked the door of the Cathedral Ward had dissipated, leaving it clear. He unsheathed his rapier, raising it while the razor sharp edge gleamed in the cold moonlight. He'd be damned before he let Gascoigne's death become meaningless. The man had blocked his way to the Cathedral Ward, and now he was gone Noctis could continue. Maybe, just maybe, he would get to the bottom of this. And god help anything or anyone who got in his way.

Then, he found Oedon Chapel.

/-/

Noctis trudged up to the door of Gascoigne's incredibly rapidly emptied out home. It was partially his fault - no, it was almost entirely his fault - but he couldn't have known.

"Hello mister hunter. Still can't find my mum?" He heard Rose ask.

He dodged the question, instead knocking on the door. "May I come in? I need to talk to you for a while."

"Umm…" Rose hesitated. "Okay, I guess."

He heard the door unlock, before it opened. Before him stood an exact replica of Ruby, if she were half her age. The pure white ribbon she wore around her waist seemed to flutter in the foul metallic wind. Again, the consequences of what he had done stabbed his heart. He had killed her father and failed to save her mother. Now all he had to do was keep their daughter safe.

He walked into the home. It was a humble one, the main area comprising of one long sofa and a rectangle coffee table, with two armchairs flanking it.

"Please, sit. Do you want tea?" The young girl asked.

"No, no. I'll get the tea myself," he replied. "Wouldn't want you to scald yourself."

He poured out the tea into a teacup that Rose gave him. It was a dainty thing decorated prettily with gold leaf, and the image of gruff old Gascoigne trying to manhandle it without smashing the crockery brought a bitter smile to his face. Not for the first time, he wished that the two of them had met under different circumstances. He sipped the tea, savouring both the flavour of the good English Breakfast that had been prepared and how the hot liquid scalded his throat. It seemed to warm both his heart and soul.

"Alright. So here's the deal," he said, after draining the tea. The idea of lying to someone around half his age was abhorrent, but he had no choice. He had to get her to safety _somehow_ , instead of losing her to the inevitable grief that would come if he told her the truth. "Your mom and I found somewhere safe for you to hide. Safer than here, with all the beasts roaming around and everything. I gave her the music box, and in return she gave me this so that you would know it was me." With that, he pulled out the brooch, placing it on the coffee table next to the empty teacup.

"Are you sure, mister hunter?" She asked plaintively. "Daddy told me himself that the streets are dangerous during Hunts. Too dangerous for me, at least."

Noctis took her hand. "We found a way into the _Cathedral Ward_. There's nowhere safer than that."

Rose's eyes widened. He continued. "The Church will keep you safe once we get there, but to do that I'll need you to stay close to me _at all times_. Understand me?"

"Yes, mister hunter," she replied. "Did you see my dad, by the way? He's really hard to miss."

"Yes, I did," he replied truthfully for once. "I really hope that music box is as good as you say it is, because your father is one hell of a badass. For my sake as well as yours, please, for the love of God, stay safe. I don't want to have to answer to him as to why his daughter is dead, because I have a feeling that his axe would be doing the talking."

Rose chuckled. "Definitely sounds like dad. Shouldn't we get moving now?"

"Yes, Rose. We probably should," he replied, the lies that he had recently spoken tasting ashen on his tongue.

Things went badly the moment they walked out of the house. From running into a bloodthirsty mob of Hunters along with their hounds, to getting swarmed by obese crows, everything had tried and luckily failed to kill them. Luckily Rose had been as plucky as he had hoped, and clearly inherited some sort of survival instinct from her father. That survival instinct had mostly manifested in getting the hell out of the way whenever fighting actually started. He was fine with that. Under no circumstances did he want a girl less than ten years old to be facing down a troll wielding a brick larger than her head.

But it seemed that instead of engaging him simply because he had run into them, the assortment of beasts and rogue Hunters that prowled the streets now seemed to be actively hunting them. Not an encouraging thought, he mused while dodging a wild swing from someone's flaming torch. He replied in kind by slashing the crazy Hunter in the neck. The beast man dropped like a sack of bricks to the cobblestone ground to join his compatriots.

"Rose?" He hollered, looking around to see where she was hiding.

"I'm here!" She responded, emerging out of what had previously been a closed coffin. "Luckily for me, this thing was empty."

"We aren't going to be seeing these things any more soon. We're heading into the aqueduct, so get comfy while you can," he called back. The sewers has been nothing but a shithole as far as he was concerned, but sadly the gate at the bridge was still locked. Maybe after he got Rose to safety, he could check on Gilbert?

"I'm not a corpse yet, mister hunter. Getting comfy is the last thing on my mind."

Of course they had gotten separated in the sewers. Of fucking course.

He brought up his flamesprayer, dousing the horde of hunting dog sized rats in front of him with hellfire. They shrieked in pain, the fire devouring their stringy fur and melting their flesh, before they succumbed to the overwhelming heat and dropped to the damp cobblestone with wet, sizzling plops. He snarled.

"Rose, where are you?" He shouted, noticing how his voice seemed to echo through the chasm-esque sewers. This area seemed familiar, somehow. He walked onwards, peeping into the numerous corridors. They also seemed familiar. "Are you here?"

Suddenly, he heard the voice of a young girl scream. He heard Rose cry for help. He distinctly knew that it had come from the direction of the crossroads. Noctis stopped in his tracks, horror slowly emerging in the forefront of his mind. The crossroads with the giant pig.

He broke out in a full sprint, desperately hoping he wasn't too late. "Please, please, don't do this to me…" he muttered. The pig was just in front of him, and Noctis could have sworn that he was just in time when he heard the dull crunch of bone. The incessant screaming and cries of help that had filled his ears abruptly cut off.

He stopped. He stared viciously at the boar, which was now swallowing what had turned out to be its last meal. The grip he had on the handle of his rapier became so tight it would probably bruise, but he didn't care. Somehow, his vision seemed to be tinged and rimmed with blood red. He didn't care about that as well. What he _did_ care about was that this damn pig would _die_. Slowly. Painfully.

The boar turned to him, the too many teeth in its jaws still dripping with fresh blood, and started to charge. Noctis dived to the ground, slashing open the soft underbelly of the giant boar when it leapt over him. He pulled out one of the throwing knives Eileen gave him, flinging it when the pig turned around again and sticking it in the eye. The purple ooze seemed to dissolve in contact with bloody flesh, forming a rancid-smelling blackish sludge that even now seemed to eat away at the boar.

Just a few days ago, someone else with the same name as he had fought the same pig. That man had unleashed so many pork-related japes that he could never look at a bacon sandwich the same way again. That man was not him. That man had been a Huntsman. But himself? He was a Hunter. That was all that mattered.

The boar shoulder checked him, sending him flying into the cold cobblestone wall. He made impact with a loud crack, swearing in response to feeling his vertebrae get smashed into powder. No matter. He got up anyway, jamming a blood-filled syringe into the vein of his wrist before flicking another poison-tipped knife into the hindquarters of the swine. Another one emerged between its ribs, and another one punched into the side of its head.

Before long, the poison took its toll. The porcine monster was now barely standing, dragging itself along in seemingly drunken attempts to kill its tormentor. Noctis bared his teeth in a bloodthirsty facsimile of a smile when it finally succumbed, breathing heavily in great gusts of air. He transformed his rapier, pointing it down at where he thought the boar's skull was weakest, before emptying the entire magazine into that exact spot. The giant pig went still. The red tinge on his vision faded into nothing, and clear, rational, thought returned to him.

Noctis leaned over and sliced open the boar's stomach. Rational thought had returned, but emotion was still far away. There was practically no hope of the girl he was escorting being alive, but maybe he could get enough to bury? It turned out that there was practically nothing left of the girl except pulverised meat. Noctis sighed, before inspecting the boar's mouth with the same amount of detachment. If that failed...

He pulled out something bloodstained from the teeth of the boar. It was a previously immaculately white ribbon, now stained irreparably with blood. But whose ribbon was it?

The answer hit him like an emotional sledgehammer. Rose. Gascoigne's last surviving family.

Ruby.

He _screamed_ , in complete denial of what had happened, but nothing cared.

He was alone. Again.

He collapsed against the wall of the sewer. Somehow, he had achieved a somewhat happy medium. He wasn't catatonic enough to be unable to pull out his pistol and place the muzzle to the side of his head, but he wasn't lucid enough to stop himself from pulling the trigger.

/-/

Icarus walked towards the seemingly deserted ruins of Mountain Glenn. His contact had told him that this was the White Fang's bass of operations in Vale. He grimaced. Using the ground zero of one of the worst catastrophes in recent history as a base was disgraceful, even for the White Fang of today.

He saw the tripline, probably connected to an alarm system. But he kicked it anyway. He wasn't here to infiltrate, after all. He was here to attract attention, and this seemed to be the best place to do it.

"I really hope you thought this plan out, Noctis," he muttered.

Noctis had woken up in the middle of the night just yesterday, bawling his eyes out. Carmine had tried her best to comfort him, but whatever nightmare had woken their leader had seemingly scarred him. He was now withdrawn and sullen, but no less determined at least. They were lucky that all that had happened before the weekend that they had decided to start the plan.

Surprisingly, the contact that Jaune knew had agreed to accept an electronically transferred sum of Lien in exchange for telling them Roman's location tonight. An electronically transferred sum that they had managed to spoof, thanks to GEMINI. Seriously, that thing was useful as hell.

Today, Roman would apparently be at this old dive bar called 'The Club', run by someone called Junior. Not exactly a creative name, but he wasn't one to judge.

Apparently Noctis knew the place and the owner well, so he had been chosen to infiltrate from that side of things. For the White Fang, he was the only logical candidate. Lapis couldn't do so because she was already Legion, and Carmine couldn't because she technically wasn't a Faunus. The regenerating girl had proposed grafting animal parts onto herself, but Noctis had shot that down as going over the top. Besides, her lack of contextual knowledge would probably expose her instantly.

Red alarm lights flashed on the walls of the base, in tune with the jarringly deafening blare of a klaxon. Uniformed White Fang members, line grunts if you will, rushed out of passageways and doors. In the span of less than a minute, Icarus found himself facing nearly a hundred White Fang soldiers armed with assault rifles and swords.

"Hands where we can see them, and don't move!" One of the higher-ranked ones, probably a sergeant, yelled.

Oh, if only they knew… Icarus smiled to himself. He activated his semblance, slowing down his perception of time and allowing him to slip past the soldiers who tried to apprehend him with stun guns. Then, deactivating his semblance before his head started hurting from semblance overuse, he pulled out one of the smoke grenades that Noctis had given him. He pulled the pin and dropped it, shrouding the entire area in thick white smoke.

He kicked on his jump boots, rising up and above the chaos. Then, he pulled the string that was to remove the pin from the rest of the grenades at his belt. He dropped the belt.

Luckily for the White Fang, all of those were flashbangs. Of course, that luck was relative. Getting blinded and deafened was probably unpleasant to the extreme. He especially pitied those Faunus with enhanced sight or hearing, but this was the plan after all.

Icarus cut off the thrust of his jump boots, before landing on one particularly unlucky grunt in a downwards drop kick. He reactivated his semblance, transforming his rifle into its glaive form before sweeping a wide arc in front of himself. Luckily he didn't actually cut into anyone, owing to the lack of resistance to the swing, but even if he did he would just pass it off as collateral damage. Those equipped with rifles seemed to be holding their fire, however, probably because of the risk of accidentally hitting their comrades.

He dodged multiple sword swings, fully cognisant of the fact that there was no way in hell that he was winning this particular confrontation. But that honestly didn't matter, because the literal purpose of this charade was to stall for time until _he_ arrived.

"Hold your fire, for fuck's sake!" He heard an all too familiar voice yell. "Don't you know who the hell that is?"

Icarus lowered his glaive. The White Fang soldiers backed off. "That's Daedalus, you blind fucks!" Some of the soldiers scrambled back in horrified recognition, while others just looked at those backing away in confusion. Others seemed to simply freeze up, staring at him. Some particularly brave idiots tried to swing their swords at him again, but the loud crack of Adam firing Blush into the air stopped that.

"Adam, you haven't changed a bit, haven't you?" He asked with false cheer. "The Minotaur's still playing the drill sergeant, I see."

Adam stared at him, and Icarus was about to call it a day and abort the mission before he saw the leader of Vale's White Fang cell smile.

"No, I haven't," Adam said softly. "Good to see you back, friend."

Icarus stared at him in confusion. Where was the overly gung-ho bastard that he had left behind, and what had this cheerful, sentimental person who seemed genuinely happy to see him done with the old Adam?

"Everyone, back to your posts. Now!" Adam hollered to the grunts. They slowly returned to wherever they had come from. Then, he slowly turned to Icarus, his eyes narrowing. It seemed like he had put on a mask of good humour for the benefit of the masses, and was only now showing his suspicion. Smart. Silently, he beckoned Icarus to walk with him.

"What are you actually here for, Daedalus? We both know that this isn't a social call."

"I'm here looking for a job. Someone in the know in Roman's side of things told me that you and him are planning something," Icarus bluffed. Adam looked slightly perturbed at his former colleague's outfit, namely the dark brown tweed waistcoat and trousers he was wearing. "I just thought that it would be a convenient way to get back into the business."

"And who, by that chance, told you about that?" Adam asked, his voice deceptively calm. That voice, Icarus knew, promised swift and severe retribution towards the mole.

"Just a guy who makes fake Beacon transcripts," Icarus shrugged, fully under the knowledge that he was throwing the unknown dealer under the bus. "The guy probably knows more than he needs to. If you like, I could help you tie up that loose end."

"No, no, it's fine..." Adam replied offhandedly, continuing to walk into the base. "Never knew you were the kind of person to wear _tweed_ , of all things..."

"What?" Icarus replied indignantly, his voice morphing into the defensive tone of one whom had to regularly defend his taste in clothing. "Come off it. You have to admit, it looks good on me..."

They walked through the base. It was frankly massive, probably intended for use as a military stronghold before Mountain Glenn itself was abandoned. They passed through what seemed to be a vehicle pool, where mechanics tinkered with Conqueror IFVs and Challenger MBTs. Icarus watched one of them at work on the breech of a 120mm main gun of one of the Challengers, while others worked with the 20mm auto-cannons installed in the turrets of the Conquerors. Others seemed to be repairing a section of composite armour plating on the left side of another Challenger MBT's turret, one particular crew remotely controlling cranes that were lifting off a section of armour that had been damaged from one particular tank before fitting new plates of composite armour into the gap. Another team of mechanics moved in with power tools to secure the new section of armour, thereby repairing the tank.

Icarus personally loved the Challenger, and would readily admit that right now he was basically staring in awe. It was an armoured behemoth on a set of treads, weighing a total of around 55 tons when fully combat-equipped. It had a single 120mm smoothbore gun, and that main gun was capable of being one of the few things Icarus dared not face without a proper escape plan, especially since it was deadly accurate and could lob building-destroying canister shells at a moment's notice. Alternative choices of ammunition comprised of APFSDS shells and HEAT-FS shells. A Challenger tank had once shot an abandoned apartment building he had been using as a sniper nest, and Icarus had only barely managed to fly away before the building had collapsed beneath him from the force of the canister shot caving in the walls that supported the husk of an apartment block.

The secondary armaments - two 7.62mm machine guns, one on the cupola and another mounted coaxially - were no joke as well, being equally able to either pin down enemy infantry under a hail of fire or mow down advancing swarms of Grimm with near impunity. Smoke launchers on the turret allowed for the placing of a smokescreen behind which the tank could change position for a counterattack or a tactical retreat.

A generous helping of composite armour - the most obvious of which was the plates on the turret that he had seen being replaces - made the tank heavily resistant enemy attack, and, with copious amounts of firepower from a 120mm main gun and two rifle-calibre machine guns, served to effectively wrap up the massive machine that was able to blow enemy assets to smithereens and crush Grimm under-tread with equal ease. It was honestly a shame that Atlas's government had neglected conventional vehicles, ones like this juggernaut of a tank in front of him, in favour of the flashy yet less effective Paladin-290 battle suits.

"Fake transcripts, huh," he heard Adam mutter, before the overall commanding officer of Vale's White Fang cell turned to him again. "So you've enrolled into Beacon?"

"Yes, in fact," Icarus replied, turning away from the tank. "I went mainly for the credentials, but learning some skills wouldn't hurt."

"Huh," He heard Adam mutter to himself, before he suddenly asked, "Have you seen Blake anywhere?"

"Blake?" Icarus asked. "No, no, I haven't seen her at all. You think she ran off to Beacon? My guess is that she probably fled to another kingdom," he lied.

The fact that Adam didn't know where his pseudo-girlfriend had run off to was reassuring, as it essentially killed off the possibility that Blake was a spy. Hopefully he would get this information back to his team _before_ Lapis connected the dots and decided to solve the problem with her lance.

Adam swore. "Dammit. Anyway, the job I have for you is simple. A few days from now, we're providing men and equipment to help Roman out for a major dust heist. Stealing from the SDC is basically our MO nowadays, and Roman's looking to up his game."

"What's the dust for? Are you going to sell it?"

"Actually, no," Adam replied. "We're gathering dust, no pun intended, for a major mobilisation somewhere down the line." The bull Faunus's hand strayed to the hilt of his sword. "I can't tell you anymore, since the information is on a need-to-know basis. The only reason I've told you as much as I have is because I trust you. Our being friends ended a _long_ time ago, so don't break my trust. I won't have any qualms about killing you now, so don't give me a fucking excuse."

Icarus decided to stop prodding.

They moved up to a meeting room, with a long table in the centre. He fished out his reading glasses, slipping them onto his face with practised deftness.

In the centre of the table was a holographic projector, that at the moment was broadcasting a three-dimensional image of the small fleet that Atlas had sent as a security detail for the upcoming Vytal Festival. More concerning were the fighters that escorted the massive battleships that were Atlas's superweapons. Instead of the harsh lines of Adler fighters, the sleek, geometrically beautiful, shapes of Nidhogg flight units accompanied the veritable armada in front of them.

The other person in the room was another lieutenant, a brute of a man with a tattooed left arm and a massive chainsaw on his back. Icarus actually recognised the man, despite the full face mask that covered the larger man's features.

"Nice to see you again, Banesaw," Icarus said, offering his hand to the man.

"Good to see you, Daedalus. Marksmen are you are hard to find and harder yet to get on our side," the lieutenant boomed. Icarus didn't know his real name, yet the two of them had been friends in a way that he and Adam never were.

"Now!" Adam interrupted. "The reason we're here is to enable a direct chain of command from the AWACS to the surveillance equipment in this base. Our pilots will be lifting off in about two minutes to eliminate this particular drop ship." He pointed to a particular drop ship that was flanked on both sides by fighters that had particular markings that were visible even through the hologram.

One was otherwise unmarked except for a red left wing, while the other had blue stripes tapering from the fuselage to cover the entirety of its control surfaces. "We have determined that this aircraft is carrying a VIP whose elimination will benefit our cause. Of course, Atlas's new ally has made sure that this VIP shall remain highly secure. Galm Team themselves will be responsible for the safe passage of the VIP, and we are reasonably certain that our fighters will not be able to destroy them in a straight dogfight."

"Wait," Icarus said, raising his hand. "So you're telling me that you're sending these pilots on a suicide mission?"

"No, not exactly," Adam said. "We have obtained a few of Atlas's Adler fighters, which should be a major step up from the old Phantoms. Still, we paid dearly in blood and tears for every single fighter we managed to get. More importantly, they can use these." A smaller projector activated, projecting the image of a missile. "Long range air-to-air missiles, LAAMs for short. One from every fighter we deploy, from beyond visual range, should blow the target out of the sky before the escorts can do anything. They're meant to engage multiple targets at long range, but they work just as well against a single target. Our new fighters should then be fast enough to escape from any potential retaliation."

"LAAMs? Hell yes," Banesaw said. "They're damn near perfect for a job like this. Damn shame I can't go up there and make sure it goes as perfectly as it could."

"How many fighters are you scrambling, Adam? If they mess up the opening shot, they're screwed."

This time, Banesaw gestured to the window. "Two squadrons of four planes each, so it's a total of eight fighters."

Icarus sighed. "Eight planes against an entire armada. Even if it's an assassination mission, I'm willing to bet that only half of the fighters at most return to base."

He was interrupted by the blare of a klaxon and blaring yellow lights, signalling that the massive blast door that shielded the underground air base from the outside was raising up into the ceiling. The alarm was mostly there because the blast door opened to a sheer cliff, the base having been carved into the side of the mountain. It would have been a waste to lose otherwise skilled operatives to an unnecessary two kilometre drop into jagged rocks. Not even a Huntsman or Huntress could survive that.

One by one, the eight fighters taxied over to the runway before taking off in the direction of the setting sun. Adam's look of absolute determination was matched by Banesaw's decidedly somber body language. The large man raised the microphone attached to the table at his seat and asked with a surprisingly upbeat tone, "Silber One to Silber Two. Since my Phantom's wings have been clipped and I can't lead you bunch of idiots myself, what colour's the sky up there? I know it's an old wives' tale, but never mind that for now."

"Silber Two here," a young male voice responded. "Too bad your lucky charm of a striped Phantom isn't up for the job here, old bud, because we could really use as much luck as we can get. The sky's looking pretty colourful right now, but that's not a good thing. It's blood red, up and up into the heavens with no end in sight."

Icarus leaned back. A blood red sky was a horrible yet fitting omen for what he expected to happen.

Banesaw seemed to think that as well, especially since he ripped off his mask and cradled his face in his hands with a muffled "Fuck."

Adam simply growled in impotent anger.

Icarus leaned down to peer at the radar displayed on the touchscreen display of the table, watching as eight dots marked as friendlies slowly inched towards the storm of enemy-marked dots, and could not help but feel a sense of foreboding encroach on his soul.

Who couldn't, when the domain of the gods themselves seemed to be promising the inevitable bloodshed that would come of this?

 **(Sorry this one took literally forever, this particular one just didn't want to come out of my head... anyway I've decided to split up the recruitment arc because I don't want to have to rush the scene between Noctis, Junior and Roman. Quality over quantity, I guess.)**


	13. Sidewinders and Backstabbers

The only two places that Pixy really felt at home were her quarters in Castle Cainhurst and the cockpit of her specially painted Nidhogg. She had commissioned the custom paint job after one of her wings had gotten torn off in a mid-air collision during a routine combined warfare exercise, to remember both the occasion and the fact that she was able to fly back to base with only one wing. She leaned back in her chair, unwrapping an energy bar while letting her autopilot do the work.

Somehow the Bloody Crow had looked at Penny's way of recharging from electrical sockets, and had found it inefficient enough that he went ahead and made a mechanical equivalent of human biology just for herself and Cipher. Unlike their new robotic teammate and charge, the two of them actually had to consume food for energy, keeping in mind that despite all that they didn't produce any waste products at all. It was especially convenient when most of the time during field operations the distance to the nearest toilet could be measured in kilometres.

However, rations at the best of times were almost unpalatable. Apparently, having most of the Guard be made up of robots had caused whoever made the rations to forget about the existence of taste buds, and now ration bars were essentially tasteless nutrient bars of proteins, carbohydrates, and essential vitamins and minerals packed into a bag of aluminium foil.

She devoured the fibrous mass in a few drift bites before crumpling up the foil packet and dumping it in a trash chute at the side of the cockpit. Not having to invest in any sort of life support or cockpit pressurisation system thanks to the pilots all being robots helped to save space, as well as making conditions in the air inhospitable for any conventional human who somehow managed to steal a flight unit. It also left space for otherwise useless amenities, like a small radio and a trash bin.

"Galm Two to Roper One. Hey, Penny, are you holding up well?" Pixy asked, enjoying the simple feeling of being back in her plane. At 21 meters long the Nidhogg was an excellent all-round aircraft, allowing it to carry an arsenal that includes a tactical laser system and a choice between multi-target air-to-air missiles and high-power single-target air-to-air missiles for dogfighting. Twin thrust-vectoring engines and canards as well as a sleek yet practical design, all made with the latest technology at the time, meant that the fighter was extremely manoeuvrable - a ballerina of the air. In layman terms, it was one sexy _beast_ of an aircraft. "After all, this _is_ your first time in the air, so I'm kinda worried that you'll end up airsick or something."

"I'm okay, Pixy," Penny replied. "In fact, I'm mostly excited for when we land. It would be rather enlightening to meet other trainee Huntsmen and Huntresses before competing with them."

"Combat ready as usual, eh? I know Cipher is, the damn psycho. Galm One, please respond."

"Galm One here," Cipher said exasperatedly. "With all due respect, Pixy, I'm not a psycho. I just do whatever it takes to win."

"Sure," she deadpanned. "Just like how water isn't wet."

Cipher sighed. "Whatever. Just stay on task, please. We need to make sure Penny gets to Vale safe and sound, and once we land we can do whatever you want. Alright?"

"You do know I'm going to take you up on that, right?"

"I know. Just nothing too outlandish, for the Queen's sake."

The panicked voice of the pilot of the dropship Penny was currently inside cut into the conversation. "Shit! Someone's gotten a radar lock on me! Roper One to Reich Three, I have radar contact with eight bandits, seven o' clock high."

"Reich Three to all fighters," the override from the Atlesian Battleships, designated as Reich Squadron, cut off their conversation. The massive capital ships were a rather effective cross between AWACS and flying air bases, and already Atlas's standard Adler fighters were gearing up to take off from the top deck of the airship. "Any fighters currently deployed are to intercept and engage any bogeys encountered. We cannot afford to lose Roper One's cargo."

"Galm Team, intercept those missiles before they hit Roper One! Grabacr Squadron, get in the air now!" Reich Two ordered urgently.

Pixy swore. Being caught up in a BVR engagement was bad enough, but having to escort a VIP in said BVR engagement was even worse. She flicked on her afterburners, flying into the projected flight paths of the hostile long-range air-to-air missiles before deploying a veritable cloud of glittering chaff. Hopefully it was enough, because she didn't know what she would do if it was not.

Luckily it _was_ enough, with the streaks of silver that Pixy's enhanced sight and reflexes barely noticed due to how fast they were moving changing course to fly into the cloud of chaff and explode. Thank the Undying Queen for small mercies like that.

"All LAAMs intercepted! Take the fighters out before they can launch another salvo!" Reich One ordered. Pixy pulled back on the stick, her Gargoyle's nose lifting up into the clouds, and started to scan the skies for the hostile fighters. She was saved of that particular effort by the blare of a missile lock alert echoing into her earpiece.

"Galm Two, on your tail!" She heard Reich Three warn. Silently thanking Reich Three, she banked her fighter upwards before engaging the air brakes in a textbook Pugachev's Cobra, slowing herself just so that the fighter tailing her shot past underneath her own.

The tactical data connection informed her that the rogue aircraft in front of her was an Adler fighter, the exact same ones as the ones taking off even now to protect Roper One. Instead of the tasteful air superiority grey that was standard for Atlas, this particular aircraft was painted silver. That is, except for the black tiger-like stripes that covered the fighter. There was an insignia on the vertical stabiliser. It was the head of some sort of canine, sharp teeth and a visible snarl factoring heavily into the insignia's design. Behind it were three parallel, uneven lines which were reminiscent of claw marks.

"Reich Team, does anyone in command recognise these markings?" Pixy asked into the radio. "They look like some sort of wolf baring its teeth-"

"White Fang," Reich Three ground out. "Somehow they got our Adler fighters. Someone out there has a _lot_ to answer for. Take them out, Galm Team."

Pixy lined up the now evading fighter in her HUD's gunsight before pulling the trigger, feeling the steady staccato of her Nidhogg's 30mm cannon tearing into the other aircraft with a stream of high-explosive incendiary shells. The hostile fighter exploded in a burst of fire, the smouldering wreck plunging to the ground and fragmenting into pieces as it did. The pilot did not eject.

"Reich One here. Reich Squadron has managed to decrypt enemy transmissions. Opening them up now," the flagships' AWACS declared. Good, Pixy thought. Maybe now these bastards will show some sense. She opened up the decrypted channel.

"Silber Two! Silber Two, report!" She heard a panicked voice yell. It seemed to belong to a young man, probably not even twenty years old. "Dammit! Silber Team, we've lost our commanding officer! I repeat, our commanding officer has been shot down!"

Her Nidhogg banked to the right, pulling upwards into the clouds in search of more prey. Soon enough, she managed to get a radar lock on another enemy fighter. "Fox Two!" Pixy called out, depressing the red button on her control stick to ripple-fire two heat-seeking missiles. The two missiles raced out into the clouds below, and she dived down to follow them.

The first missile exploded under the left elevator, shredding the relevant control surfaces there as well as the now burning engines. The second missile exploded just next to the cockpit, shredding the unfortunate pilot as well as the entire nose of the Wraith. The fighter soon exploded in mid-air, becoming nothing but a ball of fire raining metal fragments of itself onto the ground far below.

Pixy sighed. Remnant was already up shit creek, what with the literally endless hordes of Grimm outside the walls of human settlements, so this sort of petty infighting was what exactly got people killed. This? This was a waste of good men.

The blaring of an alert interrupted her train of thought and when Pixy turned to look at the source, she saw numerous small explosions plinking off of her Nidhogg's shields. Probably one of the so-called White Fang's fighters had taken the chance to nail her with a cannon burst. Either that or she was just getting careless.

At least it was _only_ 20mm cannon fire, even if each shell was taking chunks out of her fighter's shields; the system was designed specifically to be able to take a beating from kinetic impacts, so a few rounds honestly wouldn't matter much.

Missiles, though? Now, _those_ had to be taken with the utmost seriousness. Three missiles or more, with their explosions and shrapnel, would readily tear her plane to shreds by overwhelming the shield's defences.

She swore under her breath, especially after a much bigger explosion tore through the clouds to her right. She turned and saw a flaming Adler plunge towards the ground, pieces of it already fragmenting off due to air resistance. A familiar blue-striped fighter flew overhead, the muzzle of its own gun smoking as it did.

"For the Queen's sake, Pixy, focus," Cipher admonished. "Don't space out in the middle of a dogfight."

"Alright, Cipher. Now let's find the remaining five before Atlas actually gets serious. Wouldn't want them beating our kill count, after all."

"Roger that. I'm seeing three more bandits over at three o' clock high. Cover me while I get into the clouds."

"What, you're gonna try out the TLS?" Pixy asked teasingly.

A few months ago, the Bloody Crow had returned from one of his raids on an AIReD outpost that was in charge of developing weaponry for Atlas's Adler fighter. He had brought with him schematics for an experimental laser weapon - designated as the TLS for 'Tactical Laser System'. The downside was that the new weapon could not work in clouds or fog, restricting their usage to aircraft and specialised ground units.

It was a shame that they weren't more widespread, yes, but they couldn't run the risk of a foggy morning effectively neutralising a large part of their arsenal. It also required an ungodly amount of energy to fire, necessitating either an attached generator to said specialised assault units or large capacitors in aircraft or super-heavy tanks to have the ammo capacity necessary for a conventional battle.

"Well, duh," Cipher deadpanned. "Can't wait to see the faces of those uppity Atlas Council bastards after they see this."

Pixy grinned. "Just make sure you don't carve up any friendly fighters or damage the flagships. We want them intimidated, not emptying their bowels in their pants."

"Firing pulse lasers," Cipher monotonously said, racing into the clouds to chase down his quarry. He entered the clouds, shooting down one of the aircraft in the clouds with the gun on the right side of his cockpit. Ignoring the enemy pilot, who had somehow managed to eject only to have his parachute burn away into nothing and leave him to plummet to his death, Pixy continued to watch her wingman as he chased the two remaining enemies out of their cloud cover.

Soon enough, two more orange fireballs blossomed in the skies one after the other as the familiar solid red energy scythed through the air to snuff out their respective aircraft. As the orange of flame slowly faded out to the jet black smoke she was so familiar with, Pixy felt a sudden pang of an emotion she didn't recognise. Was it pity she felt, or something else? No matter.

There were two more fighters left. One of them rocketed upwards past her, prompting Cipher to pull up and climb in pursuit of the bandit. She saw the two flashes and contrails of smoke of Cipher ripple-firing his missiles only a second before she heard him call out "Fox Two!"

However, this particular pilot was either more experienced or more highly skilled than his squadron mates, owing to the fact that the fighter deployed a burst of flares behind it before pulling over into a steep dive. The missiles broke away from his tail, passing through the cluster of flares before exploding in the distance as their propellant ran out.

"Missile shot trashed! I wonder how…" Pixy japed, grinning impishly when she heard Cipher's growl of frustration.

They were practically siblings by design, which had made it extremely awkward when the crew aboard the airship they were based on had assumed that they were an item. Grabacr Squadron, despite their asshole flight lead, was a particular bunch of culprits. But enough about that.

She locked onto the offending fighter with her own missiles, launching a first salvo of normal missiles when the blare of a successful target lock echoed into her ears while following up with another salvo - this time using her 4AAMs. The White Fang pilot pulled up, deploying his flares as he did. The first two missile changed course to fly into the flares while the second salvo of 4AAMs, the delay having given the flares enough time to lose their heat signature, stayed on course.

The salvo of four missiles flew at full speed towards the engines of the fighter, and one somehow managed to stay on target despite the frankly startling acrobatics the enemy pilot was pulling off, before the last one exploded and shredded the entire aft side of the aircraft with shrapnel. The engines themselves seemed to disappear in a deluge of pitch black smoke, but at least this time the pilot managed to eject withough his parachute catching on fire.

"How did you manage not to atomise the poor bastard?" Cipher asked, his voice tinged with amusement. "He would be nothing but molecules now if all four missiles had hit."

"That's because he flew like he was in a goddamn air show," Pixy replied, before switching her comms to the general channel. "Reich Squadron, one of the enemy pilots managed to eject. Should I capture him for interrogation?"

"Go ahead, Galm Two. We need to figure out why and how they did this, after all."

As she dived down to retrieve the ejected pilot, who was now slowly descending to the snowy caps of the mountain range below, she heard the comms open up. This time, it was on an open channel instead of the encrypted channel that Cipher and her had been using to communicate with the control centres in the Atlesian flying battleships.

"This is the 229th Tactical Fighter Squadron 'Grabacr' of the Atlesian Air Force," Pixy heard Grabacr One declare. "To all remaining hostiles, you will be spared, but only if you surrender now. Jettison any and all remaining munitions on your plane, and fly towards the nearest Atlesian squadron on a non-attack vector. You will be allowed to land."

"Alright, fine," A vaguely female voice whimpered. "I surrender. I repeat, I surrender. Jettisoning munitions now."

In the distance, she saw almost imperceptible streaks of silver drop out of the sky. They fell into the virgin snow below, kicking up plumes of the white powder as they did.

"There. It's done," The woman said apprehensively, her striped fighter drawing closer to the merciless grey surrounding her. "Can I land now?"

"Roger that. Fall into formation then, prisoner. Make any move against us and I will _not_ hesitate to shoot you down. I might even enjoy it."

Pixy transformed her flight unit into its humanoid hover form, the robotic hand of her machine reaching out and grabbing the parachute of the White Fang pilot who had ejected. Then, she began to fly back up to the battleships above.

"Galm Team reporting to Reich Squadron. All hostiles neutralised, and two prisoners retrieved for future interrogation."

"What? That's impossible, we just arrived here," one of the Atlesian pilots said before his flight leader cut in.

"It's _very_ possible, Grabacr Three. That's Galm Team, you know, the elite two-man squadron and the pride of Cainhurst's Air Force. Tell me, Galm Two. How many survivors did you and Cipher leave?"

"Two. One I have with me right now, and the other is in your formation," she verbally shrugged. They had tried to kill her, after all. They had tried to kill Penny. Killing them was justified... at least, she felt that it was.

"Good. We slaughtered three quarters of the force they sent. The more animals we kill here, the better off we'll be later on," Grabacr One spat.

"Shit. So the other six…" Grabacr Three muttered.

"Dead. Our mission objective is to protect Roper One, and they threatened our objective," Cipher intoned emotionlessly.

"The skies are ruthless, Grabacr Three," Grabacr One said. "Either we die or they die. Honestly, I'd rather have the animals die instead of the actual humans."

Pixy sighed. "Can you not be so racist in the air? I'm pretty sure that we have Faunus crew members listening in from the battleships."

"Let them hear me, then! Listen up, you fucking animals, my only two regrets today are that I was beaten to the punch and that I didn't bring my hunting knife to kill you like the beasts you are!" Grabacr One snarled. "See this? The flaming wrecks below us? The moment you try to rise up against your superiors like these rabid beasts you saw die today, we'll slaughter you like the dogs you are!"

"Grabacr One, shut up," Winter snapped curtly. "Your ass will be in a disciplinary hearing from the moment you touch down, and I'll make sure that you won't be flying anytime soon. Any more words of that nature, and you shall be court-marshalled."

"So what? They still heard me! They still recognise their own inferiority!"

Winter laughed harshly, her voice heavily lacking in actual humour. "They didn't, and they don't. You do know that I cut off your comms from Reich Squadron the moment you started on your spiel, right?"

Grabacr One paused. "No, I didn't. Ma'am."

"So now you know. Remember, one more word and I'll personally ship you off back to Atlas to stand before a military tribunal. Do you understand?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Excellent. Now shut the hell up unless you aren't saying stuff that would see you dishonourably discharged _."_

 _"_ Understood."

Suddenly, the faint electronic sound of something deflecting off of her shields distracted Pixy from the rather interesting conversation. Bullets began to ping off of Pixy's shield, and when she turned to look she saw the White Fang pilot emptying the clip of a semi-automatic pistol in her direction. The other robotic hand of her flight suit promptly smacked the pistol out of the pilot's grip, and the hapless man watched helplessly as his only avenue of resistance tumbled down to the snow far below.

The internal 30mm cannon module unfolded out of her unit's left shoulder, the flexible rail-mounted arm allowing it to swivel and tilt to point at the ejected White Fang pilot. The pilot stopped struggling after that, seemingly preferring to stay completely still. She couldn't argue with that logic, at least.

"You two don't mess around, huh? Flying with you is looking more fun by the minute," the flight leader of the Atlesian squadron that had joined them remarked casually, as if he hadn't been chewed out by his superior officer barely a few minutes ago. Pixy knew him personally; Grabacr One, otherwise known as Ashley Bernitz. The man was someone that Pixy could work with, but only as somewhat passive-aggressive colleagues.

He was a staunch nationalist, bordering on fanaticism, and was no fun on the ground as well as being both a bloodthirsty human supremacist and an obnoxiously obvious Atlesian fascist. Essentially, he would have fit in very well with Mantle's _Einsatzgruppen_ during the Great War. She could easily envision the bastard gleefully capturing Faunus to execute and bury in mass graves. A man like him would easily burn another kingdom to the ground if it meant serving Atlas in one way or another.

The rest of his squadron was fine, though, but Pixy could tell that their toxic and abrasive leader was slowly influencing them in one way or another.

"Not in the air, we don't. On the ground? That's a whole different matter. Just ask Specialist Schnee and the itching powder I sprinkled on her lingerie."

"Hey!" Specialist Schnee cut in, transmitting from Reich Two. "So you were the one! I'll be having a word with you!"

"Calm it down, Specialist," Pixy snidely remarked, a smile on her face breaking out partially due to the laughter that most of Grabacr Squadron had burst into. "Or would you like me to mention your collector's edition of Ninjas of Love?"

"I, in my capacity as General Ironwood's second-in-command and thus your superior officer, order you to _shut up_ unless it is relevant to this operation," Winter snapped.

Pixy rolled her eyes, but complied anyway. She made her way up to the flight deck of the one of the battleships, dumping the pilot in front of a retinue of soldiers that had been sent up to take him in.

"Here you go, guys. One fresh White Fang pilot that's ready for enhanced interrogation techniques or torture or whatnot, basically whatever you call it these days. Have fun," she rattled off. She was more distracted by the person who was behind the retinue of soldiers, namely one Winter Schnee. Even now, the Atlesian Specialist and the second-in-command of this fleet under General Ironwood was glaring daggers at the recalcitrant pilot in front of her.

On her part, Pixy began to shuffle guiltily, the adrenaline rush from the dogfight already beginning to wear off. Why hadn't she checked which ship this was? Well, too late for that.

"I'm screwed, aren't I?" Pixy asked.

Winter simply nodded in response. Over the headset of her helmet, she could head Grabacr One snicker. Bastard.

/-/

Mihaly hated his life. The new armour wasn't helping, probably because he was basically wearing a living creature of Grimm specifically tailored to act as armour. However, his newfound hate for life was mostly because of how helpless he was.

Mihaly used to crave power. If he was being honest with himself, he was in fact a manipulative, greedy bastard. He recruited Huntsmen and Huntresses from far and wide who had had enough of being sent out beyond the walls of their city to slay Grimm in the name of self-serving politicians in the city's council. He had brought these disillusioned men and women together, to serve as his army. A veritable army of thousands of aura-wielding soldiers. It was a perfect plan, to carve his domain out of the continent of Sanus after crushing the kingdoms of Vale and Vacuo with his army. However, he had failed to consider one factor. Human greed, namely, his own.

The Troupe Master had first contacted him two months before the fall of his nascent Kingdom. The enigmatic Grimm had offered him power beyond all compare, immortality and a seat at the table of the gods. He, hungry for power as he was, had accepted. Two months later, he let the Grimm Troupe into the cavern that contained the aquifer and callously watched as Grimm scorched it dry with naught but a flick of his fingers. The panic and fear from the people monitoring the water levels from the safety of his citadel was enough for the rest of the Troupe to home in on, even without his semblance. So it was that the Wyrm himself had burst out of the well in the middle of Valhalla with an almost volcano-like eruption of flame.

Valhalla died that day, and the Allfather with it. In his place was Fenrir. The armour snapped its jaws down over his face, forming a wolflike helmet of bone plating that covered his entire head. This living armour of bone was bound to him permanently, forming a black carapace that all but replaced his natural skin.

He turned to look at his reflection on the blacked-out window of a shop, noticing how his helmet looked like the head of a snarling wolf that concealed the entirety of his features. The cape of his armour shifted as if in a breeze, but without the presence of any wind. It was as if it were alive - actually it was, being a membrane made of Grimm muscular tissue formed into a cape - and Mihaly still found it rather disconcerting after all these years.

The entire town they were in was all but empty except for the main square, where the population at large had gathered for some sort of harvest festival judging by the banners and flyers all over the place. Too bad their draconic friend wasn't with them - the overgrown lizard having volunteered for some sort of advance mission in the city of Vale itself while the rest of them were reduced to waiting in the suburban settlements surrounding the city - because his particular abilities would have been incredibly useful here. Breathing black flame upon a crowd of thousands tended to thin the herd rather quickly. Ah well, he still had the Horseman and the Troupe Master with him. Things couldn't go that badly.

The Nuckelavee trotted to a stop next to him, as the two associates drew up behind the crowd. The attention of maybe a few thousand people was focused entirely on the pasty yet corpulent well-dressed man who was blathering on behind a podium about how the town had prospered over the past few years, and that they should strive even more for success. It was ironic that the Troupe was here to bring about the exact opposite.

Mihaly had seen how the horse-demon had appeared before his tenure under the Troupe, and the creature beside him was a far cry from the slender form that he had first seen. Now it was basically an armoured cavalryman; its well-muscled body structure betraying its immense strength, the plating of bone that covered its entire form evoking a Greco-Roman origin, what with the Roman helmet with an emotionless mimic of a human face as a mask and a muscled chest plate being major parts of its armour design. The signature red markings marking it as a Grimm played out over its entire body thanks to the armour, even encroaching on the armour of the horse part on which the human torso was fused.

Mihaly watched as the right hand of the Horseman morphed into a slender yet long lance of bone, while the left hand lengthened into a protrusion not unlike a gun barrel connected to fleshy tubes that connected the bone construct to the flesh of the Horseman's arm. He knew it to be essentially a shotgun that fired bone flechettes, making it effective even against body armour, all the better to blast aura-wielding Huntsmen to pieces. It turned to him, the red markings on its faceplate making it look like it was crying tears of blood, and nodded.

He raised his left hand, wincing as the flesh was pulled apart and reassembled along with his armour to turn everything below the elbow into a tube of bone plates that was open at one end. His arm cannon was basically a 40mm automatic grenade launcher that fired shells of bone that were filled with an organic explosive compound... which essentially meant that he was Grimm heavy weaponry on a set of two legs. Joy.

Then he fired a burst, watching as the rounds spun in the air before taking a nosedive into the middle of the crowd. Finally, he reached into the crowd with his semblance. The main emotion he imbued the mass of people in front of him with was fear, but for those nearest to him he also mixed in a healthy feeling of strong hesitation.

The Troupe Master had refrained from putting on an actual 'show' for the populace here, deriding it as a waste of time. They were actually here to wait for whatever was happening in Vale to kick off, and Mihaly had heard something about one of Salem's agents planning to destroy Beacon Academy. Destroy, neutralise, eliminate as a threat, they all meant the same thing to him. All he wanted to do was die in peace. The runes on his armour, which hurt even to look at, prevented even that. The armour kept him alive, never tiring and never dying despite taking ungodly amounts of damage, at the cost of draining his body's own vitality.

Humans naturally had unconsciously established bounds to their strength so that they did not harm their own bodies, and pain was a warning to keep them from destroying themselves. A human without pain, which was what he had essentially become, realised unbelievable strength, reflexes and perception. But to him it was useless. He honest to God just wanted to die, but he _couldn't_. Immortality would have been appealing before he had turned his back on the people who trusted him, but now? It seemed like eternal torture.

The organic grenades exploded, blowing those nearest to the impact point into bloody chunks. Other people got their limbs blown off, while bone shrapnel burst outwards in a starburst of razor sharp death to strike out at yet more people. Panic began to spread, almost as fast as the shrapnel did, and soon enough there was a stampede of screaming people trying to escape from the main square. Those nearest to him, caught up in their newfound hesitation, were knocked over and trampled by the rest of the stampeding crowd.

Troupe Master Grimm himself teleported behind the man giving the speech, impaling the guy from behind with his cloak twisted around his arm to form a lance before the cloak, still punched through the dying body of the corpulent man, opened partially to form a tube that contained a chitinous hand. A scarlet orb of flame slowly drifted out of Grimm's grasp, rising into the air while gradually growing in size from a baseball-sized handful of fire to a fireball about the size of a basketball, before slamming into the ground and exploding in a crimson inferno that swallowed everything and anyone caught in it. If it were even possible, the screams became even louder.

The Horseman charged into the crowd lance first, impaling those unlucky enough to dodge to his right with such ease that it was almost as if he were skewering bits of bread for a cheese fondue. Those unfortunate enough to end up under him ended up trampled to pulps of gore by the immensely strong legs of his horse half while escapees to his left were caught in a constant rain of bone flechettes, the unceasing automatic firing of the bone shotgun spraying its deadly shot on innocent people and shredding them.

More screaming assaulted Mihaly's enhanced hearing, intensifying when they caught sight of him. They began to scream about some sort of new monster, like a human wearing full-body armour but moving in an animalistic matter that set off all of the evolutionary alarm bells in their minds. Here was a predator, their minds screamed, a predator even worse than the Troupe Master and the Horseman. Here was Fenrir, the wolf that would consume all hope and light to leave behind only death and darkness. In some way, they were right.

Mihaly grimaced at the needlessness of the bloodshed in front of him before he went to pull his sword from its place on his back, that is, if it could even be considered a sword. It was far too large to be called a sword, being as long as he was tall and as wide as his waist at the broader base of the blade. It was far too large, thick, heavy and much too crude. By all accounts, it was a hulking mass of metal that some lunatic smith had had the temerity to forge into a weapon. That is, if he ever found someone strong enough to swing around a sharpened slab of steel that weighed almost two hundred kilograms.

However, those accounts neither mentioned even more of those runes that hurt to look at that covered his blade, nor did they mention the core of his blade. His blade's core was a pure crystal of gravity dust that either increased or decreased the apparent weight of his blade as he saw fit, even though the mass stayed the same.

This meant that despite the fact that he could lift the sword with one hand, the sword was heavy enough for its momentum to carry it through five people in one swing. Of course the reverse could also be applied to bring the sword down with truly massive force to split pretty much anything in twain. It wasn't Gungnir, but this weapon was deadly in its own right.

Gram, the Dragonslayer. That was its name. He dashed forward at a speed only a horse could hope to match, swinging Gram in wide arcs that cleaved through scores of people as they tried in vain to escape from the chaos. Pieces of screaming people flew left, right and centre accompanied by a veritable curtain of blood that barely even got Fenrir's attention.

Frankly, it was an ingenious tactic on their part. Cause panic at one end of the crowd with the Troupe Master's usual antics and the Nuckelavee's cavalry charges, and lead them towards the mad berserker with a sword designed to cut much larger opponents into bloody pieces or to carve a bloody swathe through mobs of enemies with every swing. Guaranteed to cause a bloodbath. He resignedly decided to play his part, letting out a bestial roar of pent-up rage as he delivered carnage upon the panicked crowd of people desperately trying to escape from what they saw as certain death.

He looked around despondently, even as he offhandedly crushed the skull of a desperately screaming adolescent boy in his iron grasp without a second thought. All these people were just distractions. Where were the Huntsmen? He roared in frustrated anger, throwing aside the now dripping corpse. Where were they? All he could do now was rip and tear at defenceless flesh and offal, spill blood and crush bones but ultimately to no end.

His wish was granted by a wave of sound slamming it him, sending him flying through an adjacent building. The concrete and his armour met in a loud crunch that shattered some of his ribs, as well as his shoulder blade. His armour shot spikes of bone into his own body, literally pinning the broken bones in place so that he could continue to fight, before flooding the injured area with organic enzymes and catalysts. He felt no pain; he couldn't until the fight was over. Despite his injuries, or perhaps because of them, he smiled.

Finally! Now this was a _proper_ fight!

There were three Huntsmen in front of him, fully trained adults that were actually a challenge to him individually instead of those four-man teams of trainees that the academies seemed fond of sending out nowadays. He was rather less fond of dispatching them, especially when they started begging for mercy when it became clear how badly they were outmatched.

One was a big burly bearded ginger man dressed like a stereotypical biker with a boombox on his shoulder, which he then transformed into a massive hammer.

Another was a smaller Oriental woman in a white shinobi outfit sans the mask and hood but with a leather cuirass strapped over it, wielding twin submachine guns which she transformed into dual kamas.

The third, a slender dark-skinned man wearing a Kevlar vest and with accompanying knee pads and elbow pads over green military fatigues, was holding a one-handed longsword, except that the sword's blade seemed to be warped into a wavy curve. He then transformed it into a metal recurve bow, nocking an arrow before drawing it in his direction.

Mihaly smiled before reaching out with his semblance and _twisting_ , warping their mix of fear, apprehension and righteous fury into the sort of cold rage that Mihaly knew from first hand experience would make them fight to their absolute limit. He knew full well that overloading them with panic and terror could have made this particular confrontation a cakewalk, but he wanted them to kill him in a final fight to the death. That is, if he could even die. He was truly helpless now; even his own death was denied to him.

The kama-wielder struck first, sliding in with a low blow meant to slip through the gaps in his armour plating. He dodged the strike, drawing back before retaliating with a swipe of his massive sword that the woman slid under. He used the momentum to propel his body backwards in a graceful leap before transforming his left arm and opening fire with his arm cannon. Clearly the kama-wielder did not expect it, because the shell managed to explode near enough that the shockwave from the blast was enough to blow her backwards while the shrapnel peppered her aura at supersonic speeds.

He then heard the distinct tearing sound of something breaking the sound barrier, before an arrow punched into the armour protecting his knee and shot out his kneecap. He snarled in pain, the sound more bestial than human, before ripping the arrow out to allow his armour to do its work.

Before he could recover from the stagger that taking an arrow to the knee gave him, the hammer guy violently brought his maul to the side of his head. The head of the maul made contact, a shockwave of sound boomed out from the side of the hammer's head that had hit him, concussing him so hard that he flew through yet another building.

This time, the impact destroyed his spine. Mihaly revelled in the temporary lightheadedness of his body realising that it had become a paraplegic before the armour's bone splints denied him of even that. The flood of chemicals that accompanied them prodded the nerve and bone cells into replicating, even if they normally didn't, in order to get him back into fighting condition. He stumbled to his feet, supporting himself with his monstrosity of a sword. Then, he started to laugh.

"My turn," he cheerfully said, before dashing in at a speed that the fastest among them, the kama-wielder, could barely perceive. A sweeping strike at the archer, who had fallen back behind the biker and the shinobi, served to destabilise their battle strategy enough that they had to spend precious time regrouping. Probably they had expected him to waste his time fighting with the two at the forefront while the archer got in free shots. However, he wasn't some dumb Grimm. He was the Allfather - now Fenrir - for fuck's sake!

A pattering of impacts on his back armour slightly startled him, and when he turned to look he saw the shinobi attempting to spray him down with her two machine pistols. Of course, the pistol-calibre rounds stood no chance at all of penetrating his armour, but he charged her regardless. He brought up his blade in a devastating uppercut that finally connected, sending the woman flying with a sickening crack as her aura strained to block the damage.

He dodged an overhead swing from the biker's hammer, the missed blow smashing a crater into the asphalt, before jumping into the air and retaliating with an overhead swing that actually turned out to be too much for the burly man's aura. The shimmering flash of dissipating aura flared in front of him, before Gram came down and smashed into the handle of the other man's hammer with a flash of sparks.

"Damned monster! How the hell are you so strong?" The biker Huntsman yelled. The burly ginger staggered back from the force of the impact, giving Mihaly enough time to cleave his bearded head off before he recovered. The headless body of the Huntsman, the stump of his neck spurting arterial blood, collapsed to the ground in a dead heap.

The burning pain that suddenly slotted itself between his ribs alerted him of the presence of the kama-wielding Huntress. His living cape flared behind him before it wrapped itself around the neck of the woman, lifting her struggling form into the air. Her aura seemed to be cushioning the force of the chokehold for now, but Mihaly knew that asphyxiation drained aura like nothing else.

There was a reason Huntsmen didn't count as deep sea divers, after all. Sooner or later, her aura shimmered into nothing, and Mihaly released the woman. She collapsed to the ground, stumbling to her feet.

"You… you monster! What the hell are you?" She yelled, beginning to turn and run away when Gram diagonally bisected her. The two halves of her body dropped with a loud plop, blood and other bodily fluids already beginning to form a puddle underneath the pieces of her.

He felt something punch into his back, the force of it causing him to stumble forward. Mihaly span around to see that the archer had just shot an arrow at him, and was now transforming his bow back into its sword form.

"Those were my teammates! Why? Why?" The archer yelled, a collapsible metal buckler unfolding in his left hand. He swung his sword to bring the curved point through the bone plates protecting his torso, but Fenrir blocked it with his armoured forearm.

A one-handed sideways swing of Mihaly's own oversized sword sent the archer flying to the side. He charged Fenrir yet again, only to be rewarded by being run through with Gram. He was promptly kicked off of the Dragonslayer, his form sprawling to rest on a nearby wall.

Mihaly sighed. How the hell had those three died so quickly? Was he really that strong, or were the Huntsmen of today losing their touch?

He waited for a while before the familiar galloping of the Nuckelavee reached his ears.

"Is it that time already?" He mused, watching as the Horseman rushed in his direction to pick him up.

It seemed that some time ago, it had decided to swap the cavalry lance for a long scimitar of bone. Instead of the flechette shotgun, he saw the triple-barrelled profile of an impaler gun. The impaler gun was exactly that, a pneumatic contraption that launched razor-sharp javelins of bone that were as long as a man was tall at supersonic speeds to impale even the hardest of targets.

Evidently his compatriot had run into Huntsmen of his own, and most probably dispatched them with extreme prejudice if the blood splatters that covered its entire right side - the side wielding the scimitar - were any indication.

To Mihaly's surprise, the Grimm Horseman raised the impaler cannon at his direction, before firing with the resounding crack of the bone javelin breaching the sound barrier. The javelin passed him with a whoosh of displaced air, instead impaling the skull of the Huntsman archer that he had previously left for dead. A red object, a flare gun if he wasn't mistaken, dropped out of the now dead man's grasp.

"I owe you one, friend," he called out, grabbing the now weaponless hand of the Horseman - the impaler gun having retracted into the Nuckleavee's form - and allowing it to pull him up to the back of its horse half.

As he put his arms around the waist of the Nuckleavee's human torso to steady himself, he took in the current condition of his mount. Multiple plates of armour looked fresher than the rest, indicating that the previous ones had taken enough damage for them to be discarded. Even now, he watched as one particularly cracked plate of bone armour dropped off of the side of the Nuckleavee's human torso, replaced almost instantaneously with a fresh new armour plate.

They stopped when they reached the outskirts of the town. The Horseman trotted off to the side of the road, it's horse half almost demurely munching on some grass, and Fenrir found a convenient tree stump to sit on while they waited. He turned to the centre of town, to watch the familiar spectacle.

The Troupe Master had evidently inverted himself, owing to the massive ball of scarlet flame that resembled a miniature sun that was hovering over the town square. A line of flame slowly descended from the ball to make contact with the ground, kicking up a backblast of superheated air that Mihaly could feel even from outside the town.

The ball of flame slowly became brighter and brighter, the light slowly becoming so intense that it could have replaced the natural sun. Then the light seemed to drain into the line, forming a bulge that travelled down the line to the ground. When the bulge of white light reached the ground, the light seemed to escape the fire, exploding in a flash so bright that it burned Mihaly's retinas.

When the light dissipated, there was _nothing_ left. There was a massive pillar of roaring, expanding red flame that grew until it eventually swallowed the entire settlement, and a black speck in the air he knew to be Troupe Master Grimm, the maestro of this devastation. Soon, the pillar of flame dissipated as well.

Once it did, there was absolutely no sign that a large town full of people - almost a small city in terms of population - had ever existed on that spot, except for a perfect circle of black glass. It was an absolute, vicious and all too quick end to what had just yesterday been a prospering settlement.

The worst part? They did it just to pass the time. For shits and giggles.

Mihaly wanted to die, now more than ever.

/-/

Roman sat on a barstool in Junior's club, staring in mesmerised horror at the events unfolding on the live footage on the newscast broadcasting on the TV on the wall. Granted, the Wyrm wasn't there, explaining the distinct lack of swarms of lesser Grimm and rodents of black fire, but evidently the Troupe Master, the Horseman and a newer addition that the authorities had named Fenrir had been more than enough to reduce a large suburban settlement to _that_. A perfect circle of black glass where a thriving town had once been, and absolutely no survivors to speak of. Even the two teams of Huntsmen that had been sent in had all been killed. He couldn't help but feel responsible for the attack, but he shook off the slowly encroaching yet soul-crushing feeling of guilt. He had a job interview to give to two prospective mercenaries.

The two of them stalked into the bar. The first of them was wearing a grey greatcoat under a cuirass and shoulder plates of what looked like ceramic-composite armour. Their head was entirely covered, firstly by a full-face gas mask that was connected to a rebreather on their back, then by a helmet and skull-visaged faceplate made of the same ceramic-composite armour that his cuirass was made of. At their waist was a sheathed dagger and rapier, while multiple grenades were strapped to their belt.

The other was wearing a full suit of power armour, fashioned in the style of the plate armour of the knights of old. A blue surcoat with an all too familiar coat of arms, two emaciated hounds in gold, was draped over the armour. Cainhurst. At the figure's back was a sword that looked as if it had once belonged to some sort of demon, and as Roman stared at the frankly horrifying weapon he could have sworn that it had expanded and contracted almost as if it was breathing. The circuitry practically covering their left gauntlet cautioned of some other capability that wasn't entirely visible.

At least his guy - the one that sold fake Beacon transcripts on the side - hasn't been bullshitting about these two. Apparently they had contacted him to tell Roman indirectly that they were interested in joining his crew, so to speak. Extra non-White Fang related manpower was truly welcome, but Roman still had to be careful in case of underground operatives and stuff like that. He decided to be extra careful here, especially since Cainhurst seemed to be getting involved.

"I didn't realise that Cainhurst had the habit of playing both sides. Isn't it a bit, you know, dishonourable?" He smiled impishly. Hopefully antagonising them would put them on the wrong foot, allowing him to dictate the terms of this conversation.

"To be honest, yes," the armoured knight replied in a surprisingly calm, feminine voice. "But it still does not change the fact that it works. Goading the School of Mensis into conflict with the Healing Church allowed my fair kingdom to survive and fill in the power vacuum left behind, but that does not matter now. It is ancient history. What we are here for is to discuss our employment," she said, before a hand gently laid on her shoulder signalled her to step back.

The greatcoat-wearing Huntsman-in-training moved forward in her place. Roman recognised him, since Junior had vouched for him just yesterday. His name was… Noctis? Something like that. Apparently saving Junior's crew from being savaged by some bitch of a blonde who was trying to strongarm information out of Vale's resident information broker had served to endear this particular guy to Junior. Why the hell couldn't the blonde bitch just pay him like any normal person?

"What she meant was that we heard about your association with the White Fang, and we've decided that we wanted to join the more profitable side," the young man said hurriedly, before steadying himself. "The SDC's monopoly on dust has basically choked out the free market as a concept, and Cainhurst wants to restore the system of capitalism. A certain degree of unreliability due to robberies and the like would certainly dissuade enough customers that a market-based economy could actually become a thing again. Dust prices have to be returned to competitive levels anyway, mostly to lower the prices from the exorbitant levels they are at now. Moreover, if Cainhurst actively starts competing with the SDC in a suddenly free market, wouldn't the profit margins be frankly ridiculous?"

Roman understood it all, but was still sceptical. It was certainly a nice sales pitch, but he wasn't convinced. He raised his hand.

"I like the sound of that plan, but please enlighten me as to how it actually connects to what I'm doing now. I couldn't give a shit about what happens in the next decade if I employ you, but I want to know what you two can do for me _now,_ " Roman said before he chugged his pint of lager. Suddenly having a mass-murdering Grimm dragon dumped on his lap had not done wonders for his psyche to put it lightly, and he had found himself turning more and more to alcohol in order to cope with the stress of essentially babysitting for the scariest group of Grimm on Remnant. "If you don't have anything that you can do to benefit me by at most tomorrow, then leave me alone. Give me something I can use, however, and I might consider letting you in."

"As expected from the greatest criminal in Vale. We knew we were going to say something along that line, and so we prepared accordingly," the young man in the greatcoat started to chuckle, raising a hand that his armoured companion promptly high-fived. She had at some point raised the visor of her helmet, and Roman watched a pair of silver eyes roll in exasperation. "Here's our offer. My partner here can guarantee, yes, guarantee, that the auxiliary forces that Cainhurst have provided to Atlas will completely ignore whatever you do in Vale."

"Bullshit," Roman said immediately. "There has to be a catch."

"Of course, there are still some caveats. They'll still intervene for anything potentially life-threatening, so any terrorist antics on the side of the White Fang will still be met with equal, if not more, force. However, you can steal as much dust as you like, pull off as many heists as you like, and as long as no one gets hurt you will be completely overlooked by the Queen's Guard. No tanks the size of fortresses rumbling into existence to ruin your day, no squadrons of hyper advanced fighter jets screaming out of the skies to blow you up with missiles, no battalions of robot soldiers turning the streets of Vale into a war zone to hunt you down, nothing. You hire us and one major problem of yours is gone, just like that. Sounds good?"

Well, what else could he say? The offer was almost too good to be true. Cainhurst not after his blood as long as no one got hurt or killed by his side? He wasn't going out of his way to rack up a body count, that was Adam's job. As far as he was concerned, if the White Fang wanted to raise hell they could jolly well deal with the resulting demons by themselves. Meanwhile, he was taking this 'get out of jail free' card while he still could.

"Okay. Tell you what, I'm actually planning something pretty damn big for tomorrow night. I'd like you all to come in for the planning and all that, but I'll have to review you two with some of my fellows first," Roman said. Okay, to be honest, it was mostly Cinder. He definitely didn't want to piss her off, especially by adding in the rogue element that was these two suddenly volunteering to join him. "The guy you contacted will be our liaison, so to speak. I'll contact you through him, and you'll contact me through him, at least until you're deemed trustworthy enough to sit in for the decision making."

Roman got up from the bar, finishing the last of his beer. Neo emerged from wherever she had been sitting in the sidelines, the stiletto blade of her parasol already out in case the two mercenaries kicked up a ruckus. Before he left, however, he turned back to the two.

"By the way, you're hired. What do you want me to call you two?" He asked, more for formality than anything.

"Call me Ishmael," the knightly woman said. "My commander here is Ahab."

"You youngsters are still playing the 'no name' game, I see. Isn't Ishmael a male name?" Roman asked.

"It doesn't matter to me," the woman replied.

"Fine by me. Who am I to judge whatever you call yourselves?" Roman shrugged. "Well, I'll either see you at the docks tomorrow or I'll never see you again, so farewell just in case."

Roman walked out of the bar, flanked by his diminutive assistant. He heard the scrape of Neo's stiletto blade retracting, before she took out her scroll and started typing.

"Don't you think you got played?" The text-to-speech program on her scroll asked.

"Yeah, I guess," Roman said casually, shrugging with visible apathy. "At least these two actually know how to play the game, unlike Red. Besides, their offer was way too good to resist. You know that."

Neo glared at him. "You told them about tomorrow's heist. What if instead of them arriving, we end up swarmed by cops? They could be operatives working undercover for Beacon," her scroll intoned.

"Ishmael is from Cainhurst. If they wanted to screw us over, we'd be neck deep in an armoured column right now," Roman replied. He paused, before staring intently at his assistant. "No, I think this is our chance. We've worked hard to get to where we are now. Then Cinder and her goons show up and demand that we give all this up for a chance to burn this entire kingdom to the ground. I don't want that, I live here. I make my living off of Vale, and then this bitch wants to destroy it? She's destroying my livelihood, for fuck's sake! This is our way of striking back! Who cares if they're Beacon operatives? In some way that's even better. They're willing to compromise Beacon's survival to get their own plan across. I admire that."

"So you're willing to potentially let two moles into our fold just to make a point? I thought you were smarter than that," Neo's scroll replied.

"No, I'm giving these two a chance to bring the system down and save the kingdom at the same time, killing two birds with one stone. You'll see."

Neo shrugged. "Time to go," she typed, before taking Roman's hand.

Their figures, if only for a moment, became nothing but silhouettes of light. Then, those silhouettes shattered with the sound of glass breaking. The fragments eventually dimmed out to nothing, and when they did there was no sign that Roman and Neo had ever been there in the first place.

 **(The Dragonslayer and the Berserker Armour from Berserk make their appearance! Still gearing up for the climax of the V1 arc, though, so expect things to get even more buck wild.)**


	14. Tarpeian Rock

The preparations for the Vytal Festival were in full swing now, and the small coalition fleet sent by Atlas and Cainhurst has arrived only hours before. Lapis had decided to tag along with team RWBY for the day, since Icarus was undercover in the White Fang and her other two teammates were caught up in something with Roman. There were of course benefits to being the most inconspicuous person ever when in her armour, but right now she wasn't seeing them.

Weiss and Blake has started arguing immediately after they had come upon this particular dust shop that had been robbed, and they had overheard one of the feds investigating the crime scene suggest that the White Fang were the culprits. Of course, Lapis had outwardly said nothing and left the two teammates behind her to bicker their way to sense, but internally she was laughing her head off.

" **Of course you think they're idiots, Lapis,"** Lazuli cut in to half-heartedly defend the other girls. **"They don't know the Fang like we do. The White Fang wouldn't even need to rob shops like this, since they can just hijack SDC shipments, so most probably it's Roman's band of goons."**

"Yeah, true," she agreed mentally. "Also if they started robbing the people, recruitment will take a pretty steep nosedive. For a voluntary organisation like the White Fang, public relations is everything. They wouldn't trash years of PR effort just for one payday."

" **Excuse me? Have you ever** _ **met**_ **Adam? He's a fucking lunatic, and trashing public image seems to be his specialty. After all, there's a reason the White Fang are still tolerated in Mistral and Vacuo, but are declared terrorist organisations in Vale and Atlas. They're terrorists in Atlas's eyes because, you know, this is Atlas we're talking about. In Vale? It's all because of this idiot deciding to escalate and play for keeps,"** Lazuli retorted. She had to admit, he had a point. For a voice in her head, he _was_ pretty smart about stuff like this.

Lapis was trying her best to tune out the conversation, especially when Weiss started talking about how 'those Faunus only knew how to lie, cheat and steal'. She knew that she was talking about the White Fang specifically, but she couldn't help but feel that Weiss was just painting her with the same brush. How offended Blake was getting was starting to get suspicious, however. Her gradual descent into indignant fury was interrupted when a monkey Faunus - with abs that could have been used as a washboard, as far as she was concerned - proceeded to parkour off of one of the boats.

She looked at the boat, realising that it was from Vacuo. The odds were pretty much zero to zilch, but Solis could actually be on that boat. Checking couldn't do any harm, after all.

Lapis waved at the sailors.

One of them stared funnily at her before deciding that he would rather take his chances with the harbour, jumping overboard to swim off to god knew where. The other curled up into a ball and started to cry for his mother. Both responses were distinctly unhelpful. She decided to go up and ask them herself, wincing slightly when the gangplank started to creak and rattle from the weight of her armour.

" **What a surprise, huh?"** Lazuli laughed. **"The armour that weighs more than half a ton doesn't float. It'll be better if you** _ **don't**_ **fall in, but if you do you'd make a great anchor."**

"Shut the hell up," she whispered to herself. So what if she was afraid of large bodies of water? She couldn't swim after all, since living in a desert having given her no opportunities to learn how.

She observed the sailor who had jumped overboard swimming away from her with such gusto that his petrified fellow, who had managed to hook his collar with a gaff, was having a hard time dragging the kicking and screaming man onto the deck. The captain, who was visibly saying his prayers, steeled himself before beginning to speak.

"What brings the Legion's very own one-man kill team to the deck of my humble vessel?" He tremulously asked. The sailor curled up in a ball seemed to have fainted by this point. Now that she looked at the situation more, it appeared that this ship wasn't a passenger vessel or a ferry at all. It was a cargo vessel carrying what looked like a shipment of… fruit. Well, that explained the banana that that monkey Faunus had dropped on the head of one of Vale's finest.

"I was going to ask whether you were carrying one Solis Aurum, but it appears that you weren't intending to carry passengers at all," she replied, staring at the tattoos covering the arms of the captain and the sailors under him. They looked awfully like Diablos tattoos… "Tell you what, I'll pay for that stowaway's passage. But first, I need you few to answer my question. And answer truthfully, please."

"Ask away," the captain replied.

"Are you guys Diablos?" She asked. Her hand began to creep towards the handle of her collapsed lance on her back. However, that was stopped when the captain got onto his knees and started to beg.

"We were Diablos, I admit! But we've gone clean! We saved up our lien, bought this damned rustbucket of a boat, and now we're merchantmen! Please, for the love of God, don't kill us!" The grown man sobbed, grasping her leg. Lapis, too shocked by his response, just stared at him. Then, she shrugged.

"If you've gone clean, it really doesn't matter whether you were Diablos at all in the first place," she said. She then pulled out her wallet. "How much would it normally cost for a journey from Vacuo to here?"

The captain stared at her, mouth agape, before his sense returned to him. "F-fifty lien usually for a one-way trip," he stammered. Lapis pulled out the corresponding sum, plus ten extra, before handing it to the captain. "What's the extra ten lien for?"

"For a few cartons of berries," she said, before grabbing a box of blackberries. "After all, a girl's gotta eat. This armour isn't exactly easy to walk around in." She then grabbed a carton of strawberries and another filled with raspberries before placing all three in a shopping bag that a sailor had very kindly given her.

" **Berries,"** Lazuli deadpanned. **"Are you actually serious?"**

"Yep." Lapis replied in her head.

" **Goddamnit. If it isn't you and berries or honey, it's Blake and fish,"** Lazuli grumbled. **"You Faunus and your cravings…"**

Lapis internally shrugged. He could be so temperamental sometimes over the most stupid shit. Then she began to walk off, but not before crouching down to talk to the curled up sailor.

"Hey, you look kinda familiar. Have I seen you before?" She asked.

"N-no…" The sailor stammered in response. "But you have seen my brother. Y-you killed him, after all… do you even remember him?"

"No. I don't," she replied truthfully, before getting up. The sailor seemed to become even more emotional because of the blatant disregard he perceived. He rose to his feet behind her.

"You don't even care, don't you?" He yelled, his voice constricted by righteous anger. "You don't care how many people you've killed! All the lives you've ended, all those you ruined, and you don't even care! So get off my boat, and fuc-" He was then interrupted by one of his crew mates slapping a hand over his mouth. Lapis turned around to look at the source of the commotion, and found the captain apologetically smiling at her before hauling off the struggling sailor. Well, she couldn't really blame the guy. She _had_ apparently killed his brother. Still, the confrontation really put a big damper on her day.

She stepped off of the gangplank, the bag containing her cartons of berries clipped to her side, before sighing. The salty sea air reminded her too much of the salt of shed tears. Tears that she caused.

" **We've caused more sorrow than we had any right to, but we had to. Every last bit of it. We had to, for the sake of something greater,"** Lazuli solemnly whispered in her ear. Lapis nodded in equally solemn agreement.

Lapis then strode off in search of Team RWBY. It seems like they had run off in pursuit of the monkey Faunus and his killer abs. Hopefully they wouldn't get into any trouble without her. Suddenly, a realisation slammed into her mind.

"Did you say something about Blake and fish just now?"

" **Yes, I did. Why do you mind?"**

"You knew she was a Faunus, didn't you? And you didn't tell me!"

" **Excuse me! I thought the bow made it obvious. It was a rather convenient place to put one, after all."**

"Fuck! She's a Faunus, plus the fact that she's both hiding her traits and trying to defend the White Fang. You think-"

" **that she could be the spy? There** _ **is**_ **a possibility that that may turn out to be the case. However, it isn't certain."**

"Good," she mentally ground out. "Because that's the only thing stopping me right now. Innocent before proven guilty, you know? If she _is_ a spy, though?"

" **Then you do as you see fit. We can't have a White Fang spy in Beacon while we're infiltrating the White Fang. We'll have our cover blown before we know it."**

Having their cover blown would be _bad_. Icarus would probably be executed by the White Fang. Noctis and Carmine would probably be hunted down by Roman and his gang. The four of them were indeed very powerful together, but even they would lose against sheer numbers and a wealth of firepower. A spy in the system would be _catastrophic_. They couldn't take the risk, so there was only one obvious and foolproof solution.

"So I'll kill her," Lapis declared with the utmost finality. Rather tellingly, Lazuli didn't bother to respond.

/-/

Noctis, Carmine decided, was decidedly less tight-lipped under the influence of alcohol. After talking to Roman last night, they had somehow decided to just sit down for a drink. Even now, Carmine could feel her burnt out liver cells gradually die out to be replaced by fresh ones. Probably the constant refreshing her organs could go through was why she wasn't drunk as hell right now. Noctis did not have that luxury.

"So I told her to stay close, you know?" He drunkenly sobbed, his arm wrapped around the shoulder of his partner who was carrying most of his inebriated weight. Carmine had taken off everything covering his head when he had started to vomit, and now his helmet was under her arm. She had pulled off his mask and faceplate, and now the mask was hanging off of Noctis's neck while his faceplate was clipped to Carmine's belt. "I promised her dad that I'd get his daughter there safely, and whaddya know? I fucked up big time. She got eaten… and I was barely too late to save her. It's my fault she's dead…"

He began to bawl, the first time Carmine had ever seen him display any sort of intense emotion. Of course, the fact that his breath stank of strong alcohol served to downplay the moment somewhat.

"Why in the name of the Queen of Blood did you drink so much?" Carmine asked, already straining to support the fully armed and armoured figure of Noctis. "I can take it, I have a regenerating liver, but you most probably have damaged yours permanently."

"I dunno…" He slurred. "All this fucking responsibility, probably. Having to keep my sis safe was bad enough, but now that I have to take care of a team as well? Plus the whole pile of fucking shit that's Yharnam? Well, fuck all that. I can't be fighting twenty-four seven, I can't do Huntsman shit in the day and then be a Hunter in Yharnam when I'm supposed to be sleeping. I need to _rest_ , but I _can't_."

"Okay, now we are back in our room. Here is your bed. Let me help you get out of this getup, then you can sleep. The hangover tomorrow might just put you down for good," she said. Then, she blanched. When had her line of thought become so morbid? However, it still seemed to put Noctis at ease.

Carmine fumbled with the straps of his armour, pulling the cuirass off before unbuckling his greatcoat. Underneath the chemically impregnated leather garment, which reeked of some sort of pungent chemical that was no doubt proof against both biological and chemical attack, his undergarments - a set of dark grey military fatigues - were thankfully pristine. She pulled the greatcoat off of his form, before carefully pulling it over a coat hanger and hooking it in his wardrobe.

Noctis stumbled and ended up sitting on the edge of his bed, fumbling with the armour protecting his lower legs. Carmine crouched down to help him with the kneepads and shin guards strapped to the pants of his fatigues, before she pulled off his boots. Noctis then curled up on his bed, almost like a particularly drunk cat.

"Thanks, Carmine…" He mumbled, before seemingly falling asleep. She reached over to tuck him in, pulling the blanket over his cold, shivering form. She didn't know why she did so, she felt like doing so. Besides, her leader looked so vulnerable in his drunken state that she just felt like coddling him.

She wanted to wish that his dreams would be sweet, but she knew that it would be a lie.

/-/

If the Cathedral Ward was safe, Noctis didn't notice it. Pale giants with oddly blank faces kept trying to kill him with staffs, staves and crucifixes. One one memorable occasion, an unusually large but gaunt giant dressed in white had tried to kill him with a goddamn wrecking ball. Some even tried to shoot him. Noctis knew that there was a joke in there somewhere, but he couldn't find it.

He flash stepped to the side, the axe of another one of those unusually gaunt giants splitting the masonry that had previously been in front of him to half. The blade of the damn thing was as large as one of Beacon's front doors, for God's sake. It had no business being used as a weapon, yet the giant was swinging it about as if it weighed no more than a particularly heavy stick. The bell around its neck - which served as a particularly convenient warning that one of the damn things was in the area - clanged as it turned sharply towards him. It was as if it weren't alive at all, just some sort of emotionless flesh robot guided by a malevolent entity.

The white robed giant rose into the air, rearing up so much that one of its legs lifted off of the ground. Noctis watched, diving to the side as it brought the axe down with an almighty crash. The sound was accompanied with the snap of breaking bone, the sheer force of the blow having quite literally snapped the shinbone of the giant. The slivers of broken bone jutted out of the giant's leg, being sharp enough to tear through its pale skin. Noctis shot the splintered bone with Gascoigne's pistol, further smashing the injured area in a burst of thin, almost watery red blood.

The giant stumbled onto one knee, and Noctis flash stepped towards it to close the distance before ramming his fist into its torso with another spray of thin blood. The giant lurched, still not showing any outward signs of pain, before Noctis tore out his hand in a massive spurt of the watery blood and kicked it away.

"God damn it, just die!"

The giant fell onto its back and attempted once to get up before losing its grip and falling back down to the ground. The axe clattered out of its grip as it dropped it. Then, it took one deep rattling breath and went still. Noctis kicked it once in the face just to be sure.

"Well, you're no creature of Grimm. At least you put up a damn good fight," he muttered, before walking off.

He spent an unknown duration of time wandering about and killing yet more of those creepy giants that were all over the place before he came upon Alfred. The man had been praying in front of a statue, clearly a religious one, portraying a heavily garbed man with what appeared to be a metal cone covering his head. He got from where he had been kneeling, clearly having heard the plodding footsteps behind him.

"You're a hunter, aren't you?" He asked.

"Well, yes," Noctis replied uneasily. "Not really much to hunt here, though, except for these damn giants all over the place."

"I knew it. That's precisely how I started out!" The man exclaimed excitedly, before calming down. "Oh, beg pardon, you may call me Alfred. Protege of Master Logarius, hunter of Vilebloods. So, what say you? Our prey might differ, but we are hunters, the both of us. Why not cooperate, and discuss the things we've learned?"

Vilebloods? Wasn't that what Carmine's family had called themselves back in the day? Noctis dismissed the gradually encroaching feeling of foreboding before shrugging. "Why not? This city confuses the hell out of me, so a local's knowledge would definitely be appreciated."

"Oh hoh! Very good, very good indeed! Take this, to celebrate our acquaintance. Beast hunting is a sacred practice. May the good blood guide your way," Alfred said happily before passing Noctis a bundle of what looked like orange-tinted black sandpaper.

"What's this? Looks like sandpaper," he asked. Alfred stared at him funnily, before replying.

"Oh, that's fire paper. You rub it over your weapon, and it will cover your weapon with flame for a while. You must be new, aren't you? Forgive me for asking, but why are you here in the first place?"

Noctis stowed the paper in a satchel at his belt, before sighing with restrained emotion. "I was bringing a small child to the Cathedral Ward. Gascoigne's daughter. Do you know the man? I was told by another resident of this city that the Healing Church would keep her safe, but she got taken by some sort of giant pig monster before we arrived."

"Oh," Alfred simply said, before pausing. "Wasn't Gascoigne retired? He had to give up the hunting life because of some sort of ailment of the mind. He'd forget everyone he knew, he'd go berserk in the middle of hunting and become uncontrollable… damn," Alfred muttered. He dropped off sullenly, his previous enthusiasm now sobered. "Was that what happened? Did he go out to hunt once more, and then lose himself for the last time?"

Noctis nodded sadly. "His wife went out to find him. She forgot her music box, which was apparently what brought him back from the bring those other times," he stated plainly. He then watched as Alfred winced in sympathy. "I came across Gascoigne in the Tomb of Oedon. I was looking for him, in fact. His daughter asked me to find him. He tried to kill me. The music box didn't work. I was forced to defend myself," he said, before taking out the ornate music box. "Fat lot of good this thing did. It just made him turn into a beast faster than normal."

"Can you give it to me? Gascoigne was… well, friend might not be the right term. No, he was more like a comrade in arms. He saved my life on more than one occasion, and I would like to keep this to treasure the memory of a good man," Alfred said, gently taking it out of his grasp before storing it in one of the pockets of his garb.

"This might not be the right time, but are you willing to just talk?" The man asked, his enthusiasm gradually returning. "There must be oodles for us to share, after all."

Noctis nodded. "Of course. First of all, what precisely is the Healing Church? Remember that I'm an outsider."

"That's easy," Alfred said with a shrug, before launching into a lengthy explanation. "As you know, the Healing Church is the fountainhead of blood healing. Well, I'm a simple hunter, quite unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the institution, but I have heard that the holy medium of blood healing is venerated in the main cathedral and that councilors of the old Church reside in the high stratum of the Cathedral Ward. On a night like this, the gate to the Grand Cathedral and thus to the Upper Cathedral Ward is locked. You need a sort of emblem to enter, which I neither possess nor would give you if I did. I have a job to keep, after all."

"I know. You can't let random strangers in to a secure compound without much of a reason," Noctis grumbled. "But I really need to speak with someone more experienced in blood transfusion. Waking up with absolutely no memories or context of why I'm in Iosefka's clinic in Central Yharnam tends to be rather worrying."

"No memories?" Alfred exclaimed. "Huh. They really screwed up with you, didn't they? Still, it can't be Iosefka's fault. The good doctor has been doing blood transfusions ever since the practise itself started. You must have received contaminated blood of some sort, and if that's the case it's the Church's fault. They're the ones who are supposed to ensure that blood healing is as safe as possible."

"Exactly. So I need to talk to the Church. Look, Alfred, I'm not even eighteen yet. I probably have a family that I can't remember, and if _anyone_ can fix my memories it's the Church."

"Tell you what, I'll show you another way," Alfred said, before walking over to a lever. He pulled it, and the door to the massive mausoleum they had been outside opened. "This door is the entrance to Old Yharnam. It's a decrepit part of the city, especially after it became overrun with beasts and the Church was forced to block it off and set the entire place ablaze. But, inside Old Yharnam there is the Church of the Good Chalice. This subdivision of the Healing Church is directly linked to the Grand Cathedral, making it a back door of sorts. Now don't tell anyone I told you how to get in, or I'll be fired. And if I'm fired, I'll never find Master Logarius."

Noctis started to walk into the tomb, but before he entered fully he turned back to Alfred. "Master Logarius? I think I've heard the name before. Didn't he sacrifice himself to put Cainhurst in stasis?"

Alfred waved him along. "Yes, he did. Unfortunate business really, but I seek to free him so that he may be properly honoured as a martyr. Still, that's for another time. I'll meet you at the Church of the Good Chalice to bring you in, since the Grand Cathedral itself is guarded. I can say that I found you trespassing, but that you shouldn't be blamed since you're an amnesiac due to blood healing gone wrong. Then, they'll be bound by law to help you. Remember though, say nothing that will make them think that I helped you get in. Got it?"

"Yep," Noctis nodded, before starting to walk away. "See you around, Alfred. Don't be a stranger."

He walked for a while before what he had heard clicked. "Oh shit." He muttered. Oh shit, _indeed_. This corroborated entirely with what Carmine had told him about Cainhurst, but on the polar opposite side of the argument. That man Noctis has just talked to was Alfred Arc, better known as the man who had pulverised the Vileblood Queen. "Well, my like just became a hell of a lot more complicated," he muttered.

Now, that raised a _very_ important question; was he really dreaming, or was he somehow in the past?

/-/

Carmine was taking a nap. Roman's contact had texted her, saying that whatever Roman was planning at the docks for tonight had been postponed for two days. Luckily enough, that particular plan managed to fall on Sunday night. Not ideal, since they had classes on Monday, but at least it wasn't during the weekdays.

"Fuck you, you old geezer…" She heard Noctis mumble groggily. She was about to get up and check on him before she heard him say, "I'll shove your damn Gatling gun… up your bloody arse… how about that?"

Carmine chuckled to herself. At least he wasn't bawling his eyes out, unlike when Gascoigne's daughter got taken. Hopefully they wouldn't have to face a repeat of the Gascoigne situation any time soon... she didn't think that Noctis could take any more at this rate.

And it would be truly unfortunate if she had to put him down, wouldn't it?

/-/

Alfred, Noctis decided, was a true master of the art of understatement. Calling Old Yharnam decrepit was complimenting the burnt out husk of a city that he was now trudging through. At least there were no blank faced giants trying to kill him now. Oh no, they were replaced by beast-men whose scratches literally gave him fast-acting blood poisoning. Dying of sepsis in literal minutes was about as pleasant a death as being rendered into paste by the Cleric Beast's massive left hook that one time. But that wasn't the worst of it.

No, the worst of it was the absolute lunatic of a Hunter with the Gatling gun mounted on an abandoned tower in the middle of the old town. That and his irrational hatred of other Hunters.

"You there, hunter. Didn't you see the warning?" He had yelled when Noctis had first entered Old Yharnam. He was probably referencing the mouldy old piece of parchment that had been nailed to the massive gates blocking off the area. It had fallen apart at a touch before he could read it, though. "Turn back at once. Old Yharnam, burned and abandoned by men, is now home only to beasts. They are of no harm to those above. Turn back… or the hunter will face the hunt."

He had disregarded the man's warning at first, only to be taken by surprise when he was cut down by a burst of fire from the Gatling gun that was mounted on the man's rooftop perch.

At least the charred remnants of this forsaken place provided a wealth of cover to hide from what was practically a machine gun nest. Not something he'd expected from a place that still used cobblestone roads and horse carriages. He held out his flamesprayer, spraying the beastmen that threatened to poison his bloodstream yet again with tainted claws, and smiled at their screams of anguish. Not only were these particular beasts especially weak to the cleansing flame, they were afraid of fire as well. Even better for him.

"You are a skilled hunter, I see," the man loudly mused, watching as Noctis burned and cut his way through the throng of scraggly-furred beastmen that seemingly crawled out of the woodwork to either pursue or obstruct him."Adept, merciless, half-cut with blood. As the best hunters are," the Hunter shouted, swivelling his Gatling gun around and down to point down at Noctis. With a start, he realised that he was on an open bridge, with absolutely no cover around him.

"You have got to be kidding me," Noctis muttered.

"Which is why I must stop you!" The old man yelled, the four barrels of his Gatling gun spinning into motion as he did. Then, they spat out a stream of glowing orange tracers that quite literally tore Noctis's body to shreds.

"I should think you still have dreams?" He heard the man ask over the roaring sound of the Gatling gun firing. "Well, next time you dream, give some thought to the hunt, and its purpose."

Noctis had woken up in his bed in Beacon after dying again, grumbling a bit while half-asleep, before he fell back asleep and reappeared into existence in Yharnam. Now instead of simply trying to dash through Old Yharnam, he tried to slink through the shadows. Surprisingly, it worked. The Gatling gun seemed to not be able to find a clear line of fire, and with the convenient application of chunks of masonry, as well as bottles of rotten blood and Molotovs, he managed to get past the horde of beasts.

Noctis eventually crept up to the ladder of the rogue Hunter's tower, climbing up to sneak up behind the man himself. He was wearing a ratty old Hunter's garb, tattered and covered in ash. He turned towards him, and Noctis noticed that one equally ratty strip of grey cloth covered the right side of his face. A clockwork contraption, rather like a pile driver except for the head of the pile, which looked rather like the sharpened, flattened blade of a trowel, was strapped to his wrist. A short-barrelled blunderbuss was at his back, at least before he reached up with his left hand and brandished the gun.

"Well, well... How did you get in here?" He asked, pointing the short barrel of the blunderbuss at Noctis's face. "Ah, it's no matter. I, Djura, will stop you!"

The now named Djura lunged forward with the extended blade of his stake driver. Noctis parried it aside with the blade of his rapier before planting his foot into Djura's sternum. The man sprawled to the floor, sliding to a stop next to his Gatling gun.

"I don't want to kill you," Noctis called out. "Stand down and we can talk."

Djura smiled bitterly at him. "I no longer dream, but I was once a Hunter, too. I know how relentless those like you are. You won't stop until every beast is dead, won't you?" Before Noctis could reply, Djura leapt to his feet with a battle cry. He swept the blade of his stake driver at Noctis's neck, only to miss as Noctis ducked under the blow. He followed up with a shot from his blunderbuss, which went wide.

"There's nothing, absolutely nothing more horrific than a Hunt!" Djura yelled in Noctis's face, before priming his stake. He tried to punch through said face with an explosion of hot steam as the pneumatic mechanism violently forced the stake back out where Noctis's face had just shied away from. "In case you've failed to realize… the things you hunt, they're not beasts! They're people!"

"What, was the three storey tall Cleric Beast I ran into a while back human in any way, shape or form? No! Of course not!" Noctis responded incredulously, spinning around to slash at Djura. "You're out of your damn mind! Sure, people turn to beasts, but once they've reached a certain point, by then they're no longer sentient! They're nothing but bloodthirsty, flesh-hungry creatures that have to be slaughtered for the safety of everyone else!"

He lunged with his rapier, forcing Djura to dive and roll to the side to dodge the thrust. "What are you?" Noctis continued. "You're an old man perched on an ivory tower with a machine gun! You don't know anything about what it's like to be down there, trying to kill something before it kills you!"

Djura swept Noctis's feet from under him, before bringing the stake down to stab his prone body. Noctis rolled out of the way, using the momentum to jump to his feet. "You have the makings of a true Hunter, lad," the older man said. "Surrounded by all this slaughter, you've somehow managed to persuade yourself that you're somehow better than what's going on around you."

"Maybe because I'm trying to actually help, for starters," Noctis said. "You, on the other hand, are sitting pretty in a nigh invulnerable position with all the tools needed to cull most, if not all, of the beasts in Old Yharnam. With all that firepower, what did you do? You took pity on the rabid animals, instead turning your weapons on any Hunters that came here actually trying to do their job. What are you? A traitor! A traitor to your country, a traitor to your comrades and a traitor to humanity!"

Djura stared at him for a moment, momentarily speechless, before he snarled angrily. "Very well. Then there's no need to hold back! The beasts will feast tonight!"

Noctis dodged the blade of the stake driver as it came down from overhead to hack into his skull. He parried the follow-up strike with his own blade, before transforming his rapier and shooting Djura in the chest with the inbuilt gun.

Djura stumbled back, his face looking stricken and as ashen as his garb. Noctis took advantage of Djura's final moment of weakness, extending his weapon's blade from its gun mode before driving the blade of his rapier through Djura's throat with a gout of bright red arterial blood. The old Hunter collapsed to his knees, staring up at his killer with eyes full of anger, regret and… pity?

"It's you... You're the beast... Can't you see what you're doing? It's madness…" Djura whispered, before the light left his eyes and his dead body slid off of Noctis's blade. Noctis stared down at the broken, yet unbowed, body at his feet regretfully. Then, he respectfully poured the contents of an oil urn over Djura's form - after scavenging anything useful like ammo and some sort of funny-looking badge, of course - before brandishing his flame sprayer. He pressed the button trigger, dousing the body with flame in an ad hoc cremation.

"No, they won't. They'll never feast again, as far as I'm concerned," Noctis said.

The only visible sign from outside the Church of the Good Chalice that Alfred was indeed waiting inside was the numerous smears of blood outside that had once been beastmen. That and the yelling and the sounds of combat coming from inside the building. Suddenly, the commotion suddenly stopped entirely to be replaced by silence.

"Dammit, Alfred, don't die on me now!" Noctis shouted in alarm at the sudden silence, dashing into the chapel with his rapier and shotgun-pistol drawn. Alfred was holding what appeared to be a massive block of stone on a stick, which he effortlessly lifted out of a crater of shattered cobblestone.

In the middle of the crater was what used to be the head of some large, lanky four-legged beast. The skin of its back seemed to be peeled off, the exposed flesh looking and smelling like it was already infected and festering. Purple gunk seemed to ooze off of its claws and was splattered all over the depression Alfred had made in the floor. However, that was all Noctis could identify since what had once been the head of the beast was now a bloody smear in the epicentre of the crater. Alfred secured the massive hammer to his back, before gripping the handle and pulling it out to unveil a long, thin silver sword.

"Hello, Noctis. Nice to see you again. Anyway, this thing was lying in wait here," Alfred said. "I came upon it when I arrived here myself to wait for you as we agreed, and, although it was quite a close battle, I bested it in combat."

"Thanks, Alfred. Sorry I'm late. Got held up by this crazed Hunter called Djura. The lunatic set up a damned Gatling gun on an old tower of sorts, and started taking potshots at basically every other Hunter that turned up. He somehow got it into his head that the beasts there were still human."

"Djura?" Alfred asked sceptically. "He is - was - one of the Powder Kegs. They were a group of Hunters known for their bombast and spectacle, especially associated with pyrotechnics, explosions and freakishly complex weapon designs. More importantly, they were responsible for the destruction of Old Yharnam. What happened between you and him?"

"He tried to kill me. I defended myself. Now he's dead and I cremated the body," Noctis said monotonously. Why did things go so differently back in Remnant? The last time something like that happened, it was in Junior's club with Yang. Now they were actually pretty good friends. Go figure.

"That's unfortunate. Djura always was well-meaning if a bit on the loopy side, but now it seems like he went off the deep end," Alfred sighed, before continuing. "Most of the Church's leadership has taken refuge in the Upper Cathedral Ward, but one of the Vicars, Vicar Amelia if I'm not mistaken, has stayed in the Grand Cathedral itself to pray. If you like, I can take you to speak with her. Just don't get lost, and follow me at all times. Wouldn't want you to end up wandering into the grasp of another one of those crazed giants, after all."

Noctis nodded. "If you like, you could tell me more about Martyr Logarius on the way."

Alfred seemed to immediately light up with delight. "Oh, of course! It would be an honour to import upon you the wisdom of the eminent Master Logarius!"

Noctis smiled. At least one of them was enthusiastic for what was to come. He pointed to the altar, where an ornate sort of cup was placed. It was, of course, filled to the brim with blood. "Is that the Holy Chalice that this church is based around?"

"Indeed, yes," Alfred replied. "Most Yharnamites drink from it only once in their lives, in a sort of baptism to celebrate their reaching adulthood. Since you're here for the first time, why not try it yourself?"

"I've tried drinking this city's blood a while back. The taste was so cloying that it nearly made me jump off of a bridge."

"You… drank from a blood vial? Who does that? That's so unhygienic," Alfred said. He looked at him in surprise and veiled disgust.

"Yeah," he replied, shrugging. "The grime covering the vial should have been a pretty big sign, but I was dumb back then."

"That's pretty obvious," Alfred said. The disgust left his face. "Still, the blood here should taste better. It's straight from the source after all, instead of being adulterated in ten different ways by the time it gets into a vial."

Noctis walked over to the chalice, grasping the stem before looking back at Alfred. "If something bad happens to me because of this, let it be known that I blame you." Then, he raised the chalice to his lips and began to drain it. The blood honestly didn't taste bad at all. Instead of the cloying sweetness Noctis has come to expect, this particular cup of blood tasted rather like sweet cream except for a slight metallic hint of iron. All in all, not bad. He placed the now drained chalice back on the altar.

"See? It didn't turn out as badly as you thought it would," Alfred said triumphantly. Noctis looked back at the chalice, which seemed to have sprouted eyes that stared at him accusingly, before he rubbed his eyes and the eyes disappeared. What the fuck was that?

"Come on now. It's high time we got going." Alfred beckoned him over.

"Yeah. Hopefully Vicar Amelia will be reasonable enough." Noctis said hopefully, before he started to walk after Alfred.

/-/

Meeting a robot was honestly one of the most uncannily disconcerting events in Lapis's life. At least Penny was nice, if admittedly slightly creepy.

"' **Slightly' creepy? She behaves like the only knowledge she's got of social interaction is from books. Crappy ones too."**

Well, Lapis couldn't argue with that. Still, she seems pretty nice, which made it a real shame that Weiss was practically interrogating her for pretty much no fault of Penny's own. Apparently she had lost the trail of that monkey Faunus, and Lapis had missed the moment because she was too busy intimidating former Diablos gangsters into selling berries to her at discount prices.

"If you're here for the tournament, does that mean you know that monkey-tailed... rapscallion?" Weiss asked, holding up a shoddy sketch of the monkey Faunus. Penny's two teammates peered at the sketch, before dismissing it as bad modern art.

The first was a boy - no, more like a walking corpse - dressed in what appeared to be a white military dress uniform with blue highlights, the places where medals would have been pinned being replaced with pockets. At his belt was a long combat knife, while at his back was a combat shotgun - a double-barrelled automatic one with two magazines already slotted into place - that he wielded with easy familiarity. He was actually tapping the place just above the trigger, just where the safety was, before his partner stared at him pointedly and signalled him to stop.

"Can you not do that?" The girl asked. "It's not a good idea to try psyching out the one person wearing power armour."

The boy shrugged, but he still flipped the weapon over and threw the carrying strap over his shoulder. His uniform was entirely unmarked except for an embroidered insignia on his left sleeve portraying a stylised emblem of a red hellhound trying to bite through its own chains. The words under the emblem read 'Galm 1, 66th Air Force Unit, Cainhurst Air Force / 6th Air Division'. The sturdy baseball cap of the same colour scheme as the rest of his attire and his blue-tinted hair covered most of his right eye, leaving one oddly blank yet piercing blue eye that stared at everything around him with a blankly disinterested yet alert gaze. He was uncannily emotionless, seeming to be more robot than human is Lapis was being honest.

The second was a much more lively girl wearing a red-striped white windbreaker over a white blouse, as well as a white knee-length skirt. Blonde hair outlined two brown eyes with a rather worrying mischievous glint in them. In her hands was bullpup assault rifle of some sort with a built-in grenade launcher, and a ballistic shield was currently slung over her back. On her left sleeve as well there was the same hellhound insignia, except for hers it read 'Galm 2'.

"The hell is this? I can't identify someone with a stick figure," the boy wearing the cap grumbled. "As well as knocking my teammate to the ground, now you're wasting our ti-"

He was interrupted by his jacket-wearing teammate clapping a hand over his mouth, before she grabbed his shoulder and pulled him behind her. "Oh, forgive Cipher. He's been a bit grumpy since yesterday when we ran into a bit of trouble on the flight here."

Lapis looked at them in confusion. "Hey, can you three please introduce yourselves? I arrived kinda late, so could someone fill me in?"

These two were dangerous, Lapis noted. Their eyes said it all; the boy's were completely devoid of any sort of empathy, and the girl's only had a glimmer of goodwill in them.

They weren't the robot girl's teammates at all, Lapis deduced. They were most likely her security detail, and, from what Lapis had seen of them, they could easily kill everyone present if it meant protecting their charge.

Essentially, they were channeling Noctis. Joy.

"Oh," the girl replied. "I'm Pixy, and mister grumpy and grouchy over here is Cipher. We're the teammates of Penny over there," she said, pointing at her teammate who was now engaging in rather lively conversation with Ruby. The latter was being helped along by Yang, who was trying her best to translate social cues and body language between the two.

Lapis couldn't help but smile. _Finally_ , Ruby had found someone even more socially awkward than her.

"Give that to me," Lapis said, taking the pencil and paper from Weiss's hand. The pencil danced on the paper for a few moments, before Lapis showed them a rather accurate sketch of the monkey Faunus they were currently hunting jumping off the Diablos captain's boat. "Yeah, have you seen this guy recently?"

"The who?" Penny asked.

"The filthy Faunus from the boat!" Weiss yelled, eliciting a shout of indignation from Blake and causing Lapis to grit her teeth. She could honestly emphasise with the White Fang on their obsession towards wiping out the Schnee family now. If she was getting annoyed just from being her peer, how would those that worked under her family feel?

"Stop calling him a rapscallion! Stop calling him a degenerate! He's a person!" Blake yelled angrily. Lapis stood back and let the raw emotion wash over her. Still, any more of this and she was liable to snap.

" **Snapping would be bad, alright? You're wearing a suit of armour that Atlas would literally kill to reengineer, so please don't punt Weiss across the city,"** Lazuli warned.

"Not across the city, of course. But still, there must be a world record for the farthest distance someone's ever kicked another person," Lapis said cheerfully, trying to distract herself with the tangential conversation.

" **Technically, you** _ **are**_ **already the record holder. But you were disqualified because you kicked that drug baron in the balls - while you were weighing a grand total of slightly more than 44 tons - so hard that he died of shock and massive bodily trauma. Also because of the fact that one of his legs didn't beat the record distance. I'm sorry, but you don't beat the world record if the bastard who tried to sell drugs to schoolchildren didn't make the distance in one piece."**

"That's unfortunate. Still, this is a good chance to try again," she mused, her tone becoming almost eager.

" **Please don't,"** Lazuli said exasperatedly. **"If you do, there is every chance the SDC will invent an entirely new robot just for the express purpose of kicking** _ **you**_ **the exact same distance. I wouldn't put it past them."**

"Goddamnit. Fine. Just don't blame me if I lose it after a few more hours of this alright?" Lapis ground out.

Just to highlight the situation further, Weiss retorted with, "Oh, I'm sorry. Would you like me to stop referring to the trash can as a trash can? Or this lamppost as a lamppost?"

Lazuli paused. **"Bitch-slapping, I will allow. Just don't break her neck by accident,"** he eventually conceded.

"Thanks, Lazuli. You're the best."

" **No problem."**

When she returned to the conversation at hand, Weiss was continuing her rant despite Blake yelling at her to stop. "Stop what? He clearly broke the law. Give him time; he'll probably join up with those _other_ Faunus in the White Fang!"

Lapis snapped.

"Those _other_ Faunus?" She asked Weiss, one massive gauntleted hand coming to rest on Weiss's shoulder while her voice became deadly quiet. Weiss turned to look at Lapis, her eyes wide with shock as she took in the armoured colossus before her.

"Oh, err… I wasn't referring to you, of course. You're different," she said hurriedly. "You don't lie, neither do you cheat nor do you steal. Furthermore, you hate the White Fang. You're the Hammer of the Legion, after all. You've killed more of them than I can remember."

Lapis stared at her in sceptical disbelief, dismissing the spiel of useless platitudes before deciding to drop the matter. Wouldn't do to incite unnecessary conflict, after all.

" **Yes! Finally, she learns the meaning of restraint! Oh, Beacon really has done wonders for you, my dear Lapis!"** Lazuli laughed triumphantly. Lapis smiled slightly at the voice in her head shouting and screaming in absolute elation.

"The mere fact that you would sort that Faunus boy with a terrorist group solely based on his species makes you just as much of a scoundrel as you believe him to be!" Blake hollered, seemingly determined to carry on the argument. Lapis rolled her eyes, before stepping back to let them continue.

"You realize you are defending an organization that hates Humanity, don't you?" Weiss shot back. "The Faunus of the White Fang are pure evil!"

"There's no such thing as pure evil!" Blake continued. "Why do you think they hate humanity so much? It's because of people like Cardin, people like you, that force the White Fang to take such drastic measures!"

"Drastic measures?" Lapis scoffed abruptly, causing the debating duo to turn to her in surprise. "I've seen what sort of 'drastic measures' they employ, and trust me when I say that they are indeed drastic. Executing prisoners of war, targeting unarmed civilians with bombings and mass shootings, the list goes on and on. Violence is never good diplomacy; it just begets more violence in retaliation. Admittedly the Mistral and Vacuo branches are fine, it's just those in Vale and Atlas along with the main leadership in Menagerie that are determined to escalate to all-out war."

"Exactly! They're warmongers and murderers!" Weiss has seemingly decided to build on Lapis's words, nodding to her in silent thanks. "I'm a victim! You want to know why I despise the White Fang? Why I don't particularly trust the Faunus? It's because they've been at war with my family for years! My grandfather's company has had a target painted across its back for as long as I can remember, and ever since I was a child, I've had to witness the lengths the White Fang were willing to go to take the fight to us. I have had air raids by Silber Team on my house, not once but _eight_ times. Eight times, we saw five planes laden with bombs drop their cargo on my home. I've lost friends and family to those people, Blake, just because I was a Schnee."

"Is it not a curse as well as a gift, to be a Schnee?" Lapis asked softly. "All the lien in the world can only help so much if you're born with what's essentially a kill order on your head."

"That's right!" Weiss yelled, advancing on her teammate. "Family friends have disappeared for months at a time, finally appearing only as heads on pikes for propaganda videos. Board members have been kidnapped for ransom, then executed even if the ransom had been handed over. Every single day, my father would come home furious at the White Fang and at the world. We were scared, you know? We were scared that we would be next to die, especially after what happened with my father. My childhood was a _living hell_ , Blake, and I had to deal with it alone. Do you know why?"

"N-no..." Blake stammered, taken aback by the outburst.

"Let me guess, everyone else was afraid of getting caught in the crossfire?" Lapis asked. "Doesn't help if you're telling the truth about Silber Team dropping bombs on your house."

"That's... actually correct," Weiss replied tremulously.

Cipher raised his hand, seemingly taking the opportunity to cut in. "If it's any consolation, miss, Silber Team was wiped out just yesterday. Only two out of the eight survived, but we have determined that, unfortunately, Silber Two had taken over from Silber One for that particular instance. Nevertheless, Cainhurst will still hunt down the fugitive. Rest assured that we have a very particular fate for the man, at least if the forces of our eminent Queen capture him."

Weiss nodded at him before she took a deep breath, shaking with emotion before she continued. "You want to know why I despise the White Fang? They shot my father's Bullhead out of the sky when I was twelve years old, then they bombed the crash site halfway to hell! Daedalus shot down his Bullhead. Silber One finished the job in the worst possible way. I lost everything worth living for because of Silber Team, because of the White Fang! And there you are defending them, apologising for those twisted people like they're just 'misguided' or something like that! They're not!"

"So what?" Blake retorted, on the back foot somewhat after Weiss's outburst. "So what if some of them are war criminals, if some of them are cold-blooded killers? You can't just tar all Faunus with the same brush, neither can you just dismiss the entire White Fang as terrorists! Most of them just want equality!"

"We should go," Lapis heard Pixy say, and turned to see the female half of Penny's security attaché tug on the sleeves of her partner. "Things look like they'll be escalating."

"Very well then," Cipher replied. "We shall."

Lapis turned away to stare at Blake for a moment, and when she turned back... all three of them were simply _gone_. It was as if they had vanished into thin air...

"You want to know why I despise the White Fang?" Weiss asked. "It's because they're a bunch of liars, thieves, and murderers! They are _monsters_ , Blake, and rest assured that I hate them with every ounce of my soul!"

"Well, maybe **we** were just tired of being pushed around!" Blake yelled back.

However, her word choice did not go unnoticed. Weiss backed away in horrified realisation, while Lapis's helmet slammed shut to cover her face.

The potential weak link in the chain had been found. Now, all that was left to do was to remove and destroy it.

"So you were the spy," she said emotionlessly. "So it was you."

"I… I…" Blake stammered, but Lapis stalked closer and closer, which meant that they were practically face to face.

"Traitor," Lapis ground out. "Do you know what I do to traitors? I kill them." Somehow, her suddenly toneless voice was worse than any shouting. Blake started to back away, but the other girl grabbed her arm. "You were my friend, Blake. That almost wants me to make this quick."

Then she swiftly planted an armoured boot into Blake's gut, sending her flying into a nearby wall. Lapis saw the flare of aura that probably saved the traitor's life, but despite that she was still heaving up a deluge of greenish bile onto the sidewalk.

"D-Don't fight! Please!" She heard Ruby yell.

She ignored it, as well as Yang's shout of "Chill the fuck out, people!"

Lapis detached Gungnir from its place on her back, the collapsed form of the weapon expanding to form a massive cavalry lance. The rockets dotting the surface of the shaft opened up to point backwards, and Lapis couched it in her armpit to prepare for a rocket-propelled charge.

"Still," Lapis said with an air of finality. "You can't expect me to not enjoy this somewhat." Then, the rockets on the back of her armour opened before every single rocket on both her weapon and armour kicked into gear. More than half a ton of composite powered armour accelerated to a speed that only aircraft could rival, but before she made impact Lapis saw a blur of yellow pull Blake out of the way in the nick of time. The force of her charge being directed solely onto the point of her lance was too much for the wall, which shattered into chunks of concrete and twisted pieces of steel rebar.

"Why dodge your fate?" Lapis asked, pulling herself out of the rubble. "Justice will be the victor here, no matter what you do." The lance came up again, pointing at a staggering Blake being supported by her partner. "Yang, if you don't get out of the way I might hurt you in the crossfire."

"Yeah, right. I don't care whether she's White Fang or not. She's my partner and my teammate before all that," Yang said, Ember Celica closing over her hands and her eyes turning red. "So what? You gonna fight me?"

"No. Those who stand with traitors become traitors themselves. And traitors can do nothing but die!" Lapis roared, her rockets kicking into gear once more as she charged at the two of them. Yang pushed Blake out of the way before taking the hit head on, the resulting force knocking her back so hard that she skidded for several meters.

"Sis!" She heard Ruby shout, before the impact of multiple armour-piercing .50 cal rounds rocked her armoured body. Of course her aura kept her safe, but her armour was another matter altogether, especially if she hadn't braced for impact beforehand. She saw the gouges on the armour plating that the bullets had inflicted, before they closed up almost like how a normal flesh wound would. Self-repairing armour made maintenance a non-factor, to be honest.

"You too?" She asked sadly, turning to Ruby. "Well, I didn't want to kill off an additional two people, but if that's what I have to do…" She then transformed her lance into its beam cannon, which started to charge up with the familiar electronic voice warning " **[LASER CHARGING]**."

Ruby stared at her for a moment, almost sadly, before she decided to close her eyes and wait for the inevitable. Yang slowly got up from where she had been laid out by the hit, her eyes red with rage and her long golden hair glowing with power, but from the distance she was at, all she could do was scream in impotent anger and despair. The laser's mechanism span faster and faster, the deadly whine becoming louder and louder as it charged up...

Just in time to stop the laser's charge, the spinning innards seemed to freeze up and jam. Ice crystals began to grow in the mechanisms of the laser's system, jamming the spinning heat sinks and various systems that all served in their common purpose of projecting a beam of deadly light that was more like the wrath of God.

Lapis growled, before transforming her weapon back into its lance form with a metallic clank and the crunching of ice crystals. The mining laser would be useless until whenever she had the opportunity to run the mechanism when all the ice had melted so as to vaporise the water, but luckily her lance's rockets worked on another separate system.

"Don't you dare hurt her!" She heard Weiss yell, Myrtenaster pointing at Gungnir with its dust revolver active, implying that she had used ice dust to freeze up the innards of her weapon. "Don't you dare touch them! What did Ruby or Yang do wrong? What did Blake do wrong?"

"They were protecting a traitor. Therefore, they became traitors themselves," Lapis said monotonously.

"You said it yourself! Let the victor be justice, you said. This isn't justice!" Weiss shouted. "This is vigilantism, and what you're planning is summary execution! Blake deserves a trial, she deserves the benefit of the doubt!"

"It doesn't matter. Vigilante justice is still justice, but more effective and immediate. When a limb is infected to the point of sepsis, is it not better to amputate the arm and save the patient's life than to risk it all just to keep that arm?" She asked. "Are you going to get into my way as well? You can't stop me, and you know that."

"No." Weiss said, a smile beginning to grow on her face. "But she can."

"What do you me-" Lapis began, before Yang landed a solid right hook to the left jaw of her helmet. The armour there seemed to dent inwards slightly, the ceramic plate inside shattering as it absorbed the impact and causing the viscous amber-coloured armour within to start leaking out. "Oh come on!" She yelled, temporarily losing her composure. "Usually I'm the one who does that!"

Since non-Newtonian fluids change their viscosity under stress to either become more solid or more liquid, fluids leaning to the former were currently being tested by AIReD for use in body armour instead of conventional armour plating. However, the still unknown maker of this particular set of armour had long ago beaten them to the punch.

Lapis staggered back from the hit, before striking Yang in the side of the head with the shaft of her lance. The hit knocked Yang off her feet, and Lapis took the opportunity to carry through with a stab to the sternum. The stab doubled her over, and Lapis added to the succession of hits by kneeing Yang in the face. Her aura seemed to stutter, flickering so that it wasn't strong enough to fully take away the force of an armoured knee to the face, so thus Yang's nose broke in a dull crunch and a splatter of blood. To finish the combo off, she kicked Yang away in a way most people would only associate with door-breaching.

Yang flew back from the force of the kick, but in apparent retaliation Lapis was jolted forward by something electrical in nature if the way her armour's rockets had temporarily shorted out was any clue. She spun around to see that Weiss had once again used Myrtenaster to disable her capabilities in one way or another. Lapis roared with almost animalistic wrath, her armour transforming it into a deep electronic boom that seemed to shake the three girls in front of her to the core. Good.

"If I have to kill all three of you to get to Blake, then so be it!" She shouted in rage.

"You won't," Ruby said, with a surprising amount of conviction considering how petrified she looked now. "I got Blake to run while you were busy with Weiss and Yang. She's long gone by now."

"You know that I'm not the only one after her blood, right? If any of my teammates find her without her team to bail her out, she's dead."

"Actually, no," Weiss said calmly. "We didn't know who the spy was, but Noctis and I basically agreed that since they haven't actually tried anything against me yet, we agreed that we'd capture them alive for a fair trial if we ever found out their identity."

Was she trying to bluff through this? Was she telling the truth? It didn't matter.

"It doesn't matter. I'll hunt her down and finish her off myself. It's a matter of security, after all."

"No, you won't," Weiss continued. "After all, we actually _can_ stop you now."

Then, she raised Myrtenaster once more. The dust cartridge within fired, the slug of dust and energy slamming into the ground at Lapis's feet and encasing her entire lower legs in a solid piece of ice so hard even the strength of her armour couldn't break out of. Ruby disappeared in a blur of red and rose petals, Crescent Rose smashing through the ice and impacting the back of Lapis's armoured legs at supersonic speeds. Lapis fell onto her back with a thunderous clang, the rockets on her back sputtering before dying out. Yang leapt up onto her armour's torso, her hair glowing so brightly and with so much heat that her HUD was actually giving her temperature warnings due to the close proximity. She straddled her, raising her fists before delivering blow after blow to Lapis's helmet.

"Fuck you, bitch! Never touch my sister again!" Yang yelled, her voice cracking from pure rage, punctuating every word with a punch so hard that her helmet was actually collapsing from the stress. The blows were much, much harder than usual, smashing the composite-layered powered armour like so much eggshells. Blue liquid armour splattered around like gouts of aquamarine blood, the rigid plate of armour splintering and cracking like bone. The impacts soon became too much for her armour's shock absorbers to handle, and soon Lapis found herself being gradually concussed into unconsciousness.

Despite her former friend currently attempting to beat her into a coma, all Lapis could think about was what Blake could potentially do. She could easily blow Icarus's cover in the White Fang, or expose Noctis and Carmine as infiltrators in Roman's gang. Then they would get hurt.

Lapis's actual worst nightmare was that her friends would get hurt instead of her. That was why she was so protective of Solis, and so ruthless against those that would seek to harm him and his Legion. She even cared for Brad, in a less personal sort of way. It seemed that she had transferred said protectiveness to her team. Why shouldn't she? They were her teammates, her friends who actually accepted her for who she was instead of the absolutely remorseless bruiser she pretended to be. They knew her personally, while team RWBY couldn't for the life of them see past her position in the Legion. In her eyes it was an easy trade, team RWBY's lives for those of her teammates.

But she had failed. Now the traitorous rat had escaped, under false pretences of innocence and justice, to tear to pieces all that she cherished.

All that she could think, amongst the severe property damage she had inflicted and despite the three friends that she had essentially backstabbed, was that she had failed.

The last thing she heard before unconsciousness took her was the sharp crack of the shock absorbers of her helmet finally giving up the ghost. Her aura saved her life and stopped her skull from being smashed, but the concussion was still enough to cause her to black out.

/-/

Noctis was honestly regretting waking up for this. Sure, Yharnam was horrid at times, but it was definitely better than _this_. He had been woken up by a call on his personal scroll to notify him that Lapis had basically tried to kill the entirety of team RWBY. To phrase it precisely, Weiss had called him.

"Weiss? What do you want?" He asked.

"I have good news, bad news and worse news. The bad and worse news is much longer. Which one do you want to hear first?"

"The good news," he said.

"The good news is that we've found our spy."

"The bad news?"

"Blake was the 'spy', so to speak."

"Fuck. The worse news?" Noctis finally asked.

"Lapis found out at the same time we did," Weiss explained. "She tried to kill Blake and we managed to stop her. However, she did cause an ungodly amount of property damage and she tried to kill the rest of us as well. She passed us off as traitors before trying to kill Yang first, then Ruby. You can imagine how well that went."

"Motherfucker. Let me guess, Blake escaped."

"We told her to run from the crazed rocket-propelled armoured golem with a lance the size of a small child. There's a difference."

"Alright, fine. Tell me at least you arranged transport for her back to Beacon."

"We did. In fact, Galm Team helped us arrange the transport. She's now restrained in a Bullhead being escorted by them back to the Academy."

Then, Carmine had dragged him off because she wanted to go meet Galm Team at the landing zone.

"So you were unaware of this until you received Weiss's call?" Professor Goodwitch asked.

"Yes, pretty much. We never authorised summary execution," he said, watching as the Bullhead's door gradually opened. When it did, he couldn't help but stare in surprised horror. Team RWBY sans Blake frankly looked… like shit.

Weiss and Ruby were being treated for various cuts and bruises of varying severity, but Yang looked like she'd been through hell and back. Multiple deep gashes covering her body were visible through heavily torn clothes, while her nose was mangled beyond recognition. Even despite the fact that her modesty was now being protected by only a blanket that a kind crew member of the Bullhead had given her, presumably due to her clothes being shredded in the battle, her eyes still held that determination Noctis personally knew was her defining characteristic. She was beaten, but yet was unbowed.

Lapis, on the other hand, was literally entombed in stone. She was still unconscious, which explained why she wasn't currently screaming her head off for being rendered into what was basically a statue.

"Seriously?" He asked Weiss, his face clearly unimpressed. "Earth dust? That's gonna be hard to get out of."

"That's the point," Weiss deadpanned. "We needed _some_ way of restraining her."

The both of them then stopped to look on with admiration and respect as Glynda used her semblance to levitate what must have been almost a ton of stone, hyper-advanced armour and one very pissed off Lapis.

"Well, I kinda need to get going," Weiss finally said. "After all, Yang really needs to get to the medical wing."

"Yeah, I get what you mean. Yang, are you alright? You look like you got run over by a car," He asked.

"I'm fine," she said curtly, pushing past him and walking off into the Academy. Noctis noticed that her irises were still crimson.

"Forgive her. She's still rather shaken up since Lapis started going after Ruby. If I hadn't frozen up that laser when I did…"

"Then today would have turned out much more tragically. That laser she has can pretty much cut through a tank with no trouble at all. Aura would be nothing but tissue paper."

Weiss sighed. "I know. But you weren't there. You didn't face down the Hammer of the Legion with only two other people. She's killed off entire battalions by herself before."

"I know. But on behalf of her, I apologise. Help me wish Yang a speedy recovery, alright?"

"I will. See you around, Noctis."

The conversation dropped off after that. Weiss eventually left to follow her teammates to the infirmary, leaving Noctis to watch as Carmine conversed excitedly with the female half of Galm Team.

Suddenly, a hand tapped him on the back.

"Gah!" He yelled in surprise, spinning around to find a boy around the same age as himself, but the other boy's attire suggested that he was a military man through and through.

"Put away your flamethrower, damn it!" The boy yelled. "There's jet fuel here, so don't blow us all up!"

Noctis realised that he had subconsciously engaged the new flamethrower that he had found inbuilt into his arm after his first night in Yharnam. At least he hadn't set the whole place on fire, so Oobleck's personal tutoring was doing its job.

"Who are you?" Noctis asked.

"My name is Cipher. Nice to meet you," the now named Cipher said, before reaching out his hand. Noctis took it and shook the pilot's hand heartily. "My sister over there is Pixy. She's the one talking to the heir apparent of Cainhurst, Miss Reinhardt."

"Oh, you mean Carmine?" Noctis asked.

Cipher looked surprised and somewhat offended for a moment, before he composed himself. "If that's what she sees fit to let you call her by, then fine. What is your name?"

"Oh, I'm Noctis. Noctis Argent," he said.

The two siblings turned to each other, and Pixy hollered something that Noctis couldn't understand without context.

What did she mean by Cipher had finally found someone as uptight as himself?

 **(Sorry for the overly long chapter, but at least it's only one more till the end of V1. After that, one or two interludes then it's off to V2.)**


	15. Shades of Grey

"A dust heist?" Noctis asked rhetorically. "It won't be that hard, if you ask me. The SDC freighter is pretty much undefended barring any armed guards on board, and since our Bullheads are armed it shouldn't be a problem to neutralise said guards. We're set for basically anything short of the Atlas Military or Cainhurst taking action, and since Ishmael here is working with us the latter is a non factor," Noctis, now under the guise of Ahab, explained.

The briefing room in the base that the White Fang had managed to create from the ruins of Mountain Glenn was mercifully well equipped, with a map of the vicinity of the docks being pinned to the wall. A holographic projector served to provide a three-dimensional image of the freighter and the loading bay of the docks, as well as of the surrounding airspace.

Giving a briefing to Adam and Roman on the strategy they had decided on was stressful enough, not least because Roman had placed upon them the responsibility of coming up with a plan in the first place. Since the White Fang was going to provide the manpower, Adam and therefore Icarus, as well as two other lieutenants, were sitting in as well.

At least, they were reasonably confident that the plan they had come up with was at least decent enough to work.

"Two Bullheads will be sent out to drop in the first wave of troops, one at the docks and the second at the helipad of the bridge of the freighter," he continued. "The Bullhead landing nearer to the bridge will be designated as Golem One, while the one landing at the cargo bay will be Golem Two. Golem One will carry the White Fang's most elite soldiers, a strike team outfitted for the sole purpose of clearing out any guards assigned to our target. Daedalus will be in Golem One. Those in Golem Two will serve as manpower on the ground, as well as an advance guard to secure the docks for reinforcements. They will be equipped as how the White Fang's standard infantry would normally be. Ishmael and I will be in Golem Two." Noctis finished his piece, nodding to Carmine to continue.

"The reinforcements will be designated as Mage One and Mage Two. Roman, you will be in Mage Two," Carmine, now Ishmael, continued further. "They, along with Golem Squadron, will provide our avenue of escape as well as our only method of extracting the dust. Therefore, make sure that they are protected at all costs."

Carmine turned towards the White Fang representative present. "Adam, make it clear to your men that even one of those aircraft is worth more than a hundred of them. They are to fight to disengage only, not fight to kill. If any Huntsmen intervene, ensure that they contact either Ahab, me or Daedalus."

She then turned to the only crime boss in the room. "Roman, you are to make sure that the dust is extracted safely and as quickly as possible without the cargo going off. The soldiers in Golem One will also be responsible for placing scuttling charges on the hull of the freighter and remotely detonating said charges to sink the freighter after all is said and done. Got it, you two?"

Roman looked up from his scroll before shrugging and taking a sip of coffee. Adam nodded sullenly, while Icarus seemed to be scrawling down notes on a notepad. The massive lieutenant was nowhere to be seen, but in his place were a pair of non-commissioned officers.

"I have one question," one of the officers asked, raising her hand. "What do we do if and when the police or, god forbid, the Atlas military steps in?"

"You mount as effective a resistance as possible while waiting for me, Ishmael or Daedalus. Just make sure that the dust is extracted safely before any shooting starts," Noctis said. "The strike team in Golem One will be given man-portable heavy weaponry, like general-purpose machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, but if the military proper decides to step in with Adler fighters or Challenger tanks or pretty much anything we aren't equipped to deal with, our priority will be to evacuate as quickly as possible. Again, Cainhurst won't be taking any action against us thanks to Ishmael here, so at least we don't have to worry about their brand of insane hardware. Any other questions? No? Then you're dismissed."

Adam and his retinue got up to leave, but Icarus stopped them. "Would it be okay if I were to ask Ahab about one particular part of the plan?" The sniper asked. "It's about the protocol for the scenario in which Huntsmen show up."

"Go ahead, but make sure to report for battle preparations by noon," Adam waved him off before beckoning the two lieutenants to follow him. "If there's any last minute changes to the plan, you know where to find me," he said before finally leaving.

Roman drained his coffee, before he rose up from his chair. "The coffee is actually kinda decent, considering that this place has been abandoned for all of seventeen years, but I'm still gonna check out the dive bar that the White Fang set up in one of the old mess halls. I've heard that these animals can make one hell of a pint."

"I'd be interested but I'm still hungover from Thursday, so no thanks for me," Noctis commented offhandedly. "So, whaddya think? This plan is one hell of a lot better than the one _you_ proposed."

"Yeah, I get it. You planned for everything, didn't you? From hostile Huntsmen to a military intervention to Atlas, you've got protocols to adhere to and planned responses to follow," Roman said bitterly. "Stop rubbing my face in the mud."

"Why not? You ended up fighting a fifteen year old girl _on equal terms_ the last time you tried to do something on your own. Junior's men outnumbered her, and from what I can remember of them they were actually competent, but under your command they utterly failed at neutralising her."

"A fifteen year old girl that had an anti-materiel rifle that turned into a scythe and back."

"Still a fifteen year old girl. She's relatively untrained compared to you as well; she only enrolled in Beacon this year thus skipping two years at Signal," Noctis said, rolling his eyes behind the concealing lenses of his mask. "Okay, fine, I understand somewhat where you're coming from. She has a semblance of literal super speed, she's exceptionally skilled for her age - that's why she's in Beacon in the first place, and a scythe is hard to guard against due to the differences in angles of approach. I get it. It's just that you, my friend, are already a fully grown, fully trained, and fully qualified Huntsman. She's a student. She shouldn't even be in the same league as you."

Roman flipped him the bird in response before turning around and leaving.

"You gotta admit, you did roast him really damn badly," Icarus quipped, hauling himself up to sit on the edge of the table. If Noctis were being honest, Icarus had really improved from when they had first met. He had turned from being a distant, stone cold killer to finally joining in the sense of camaraderie that linked the four of them together. At least, he thought that that camaraderie had existed until yesterday.

"What's wrong?" He asked at Noctis's lack of a reply. "Is it what happened with Lapis? You know we couldn't do anything about it. I only found out after you told me."

"Yeah," Noctis sighed. "It's just that I'm pretty sure the entirety of team RWBY hates her and by extension all of us now."

"If they do, then team RWBY were actually worse people than I thought," Carmine said. "Lapis did not act in accordance with what we had decided, and yet they still decided to pin the blame on us."

"But still, you should have told us that Blake was a defector. It became painfully obvious after she didn't turn up at the base yesterday, and Adam nearly punched me in the face for asking where she was. It would have saved Yang and Lapis from beating each other to hell and back," Noctis said somewhat accusingly.

"It's a sore point for Adam," the assassin said with a sigh. "Well, the reason I didn't tell you about the whole deal with Blake was that I was worried that… this would happen," Icarus dropped off lamely. "Fuck. That and the fact that Blake herself didn't want me blabbing her secrets to you guys. If it came down to the point where it became important, though, I would have told you without any hesitation whatsoever."

Carmine unsheathed her greatsword, placing it on the table before starting to clean the blade with a finely embroidered silk handkerchief. Weirdly enough, the symbols - ones that hurt to even look at - woven into the silk with red metallic thread started to glow with a faint blood red light when the handkerchief made contact with the sword.

"This is truly unfortunate, but we honestly have our hands tied in this situation," she intoned, shrugging as she did. "The only one who could possible patch this up is Lapis, but she cannot apologise if she still refuses to talk to anyone like what she has been doing since Friday. Even if she was willing to, there is no guarantee that even that could patch things up completely. Yang in particular is still smouldering over it."

"Yang's probably more pissed that her hair got damaged because of it," Noctis quipped, before pausing when the joke didn't take well. "Dammit, I get what she feels more than most. If someone tried to vaporise my sister with a laser I'd be pissed as hell too. But we're still in deep shit with Glynda because she's the one in charge of handling the fallout of Beacon freshmen getting into a one-v-three battle royale to the death in the middle of downtown Vale, as well as the resulting property damage."

"What property damage? Knowing Lapis, it's probably gratuitous and overwhelming," Icarus said, an undercurrent of dread entering his voice.

"Mostly smashed up sidewalk and tarmac, restricted to only one street somehow, but a wall or two got shattered as well," Noctis reported. "Tends to happen when a girl wearing nearly a ton of power armour goes on a rampage."

"Well, that actually is surprisingly underwhelming. Considering that both Lapis and Yang were trying to kill each other…" Carmine noted in amusement.

"We were expecting a few city blocks to be flattened. However, looks like Weiss somehow lucked out with the types of dust she blasted Lapis with," Noctis shrugged. "First she froze up that laser we've seen cut through Grimm like a plasma torch through butter. Next she shorts out the rockets on the back of her armour with electric dust. Lastly she freezes Lapis's feet to the ground, giving Ruby enough time to trip her up and Yang enough time to, by the grace of God himself, conk out our very own bruiser. If they weren't as lucky as they were, I'm pretty sure that we'd be somehow responsible for three newly filled body bags."

Noctis paused, before continuing, "And I for one do _not_ want to deal with the repercussions of Weiss's death in particular. Having Willow Schnee pissed with me, especially after what happened with her late husband, would be the absolute last thing I would want."

Icarus flinched at the mention of Jacques, and Noctis nodded at him apologetically in response. "Did that bring up any bad memories? So sorry about that."

Noctis fiddled with the hologram projector, before bringing up a somewhat detailed image of Beacon Academy. "Well, we've found out one good thing so far. It looks like someone hired both the Vale cell of the White Fang and Roman's gang for one specific purpose. Namely, to attack and preferably destroy Beacon Academy," he said, taking note of the very justified expression of shock and righteous anger that emerged on Icarus's face and mirrored his own. Even Carmine had a look of disbelieving outrage on her face.

"Why in the holy name of the Immortal Queen Annalise would someone even think about taking out a Huntsman Academy?" Carmine wondered aloud in disbelief, slamming both gauntleted hands onto the meeting table. The table creaked ominously. "They are the defenders of humanity as a whole!"

Icarus buried his face in his hand, nudging his reading glasses upwards as he did. "Politics. Fucking politics. That or someone's trying to send a message to the world at large."

"The only message they're sending if they succeed is one asking for a kill order!" Noctis declared, slamming the table with an open palm as he did. The table creaked again, but louder.

Carmine raised her hand. "Forgive me, but what is a kill order?"

"Well, a kill order basically allows for the murder of its holder without any legal consequences whatsoever, even going to the extent as to reward whoever carries out the order," Icarus said. "Authorities such as the militaries and police forces of the four kingdoms are given carte blanche for any actions they take to eliminate targets of kill orders, such as rogue Huntsmen or too-powerful Grimm. A bounty is also placed on their heads to encourage Huntsmen or even civilians to go after those with kill orders placed on them. The only two parties who can issue such orders are the ruling Council of any of the four kingdoms, or a tribunal made up of the four headmasters of the four Huntsmen academies in Remnant."

"If that is so, then why are the Grimm Troupe still active? They attacked another settlement just three days ago, for example."

"The Grimm Troupe are… different," Noctis said. "It's mostly because the Troupe Master is such a bloody evil genius. We _used_ to try and eliminate them with sheer firepower, but we stopped when we realised that they were just baiting us into doing their work for them. Still, it didn't stop us from glassing what must have been tens of thousands of people with laser lance strikes before we realised what was up. Now the most we do is either send teams of Huntsmen in or carry out conventional air strikes, and even then we only send in penal units because trying to kill even one Troupe member is basically a suicide mission."

"Damn. So how do you even stop them?"

"We don't," Icarus mumbled, thrusting his hands into the pocket of his tweed waistcoat. "See what happened on Thursday?"

The conversation trailed off into solemn silence before Noctis decided to change the subject. "Anyway, what we do have is intel and a battle plan."

"A battle plan?" Icarus asked. "What kind?"

"A three-dimensional hologram with detailed routes for squads of soldiers. They're working off of publicly available floor plans from Beacon's most recent open house, so they won't know exactly what's where. Still, it's concerning how well done it is."

"We will have to notify Ozpin and prepare defences," Carmine muttered. "Cainhurst will provide assistance if it proves necessary."

"You know what? Let's just keep this for later," Noctis said, throwing his hands up. "We have a robbery to commit tonight, so we honestly should focus on making sure that it goes well. We can worry about the initials tomorrow."

With that, the meeting adjourned.

/-/

Icarus hated sitting in a Bullhead. He liked being able to fly by himself, weaving through obstacles and cutting through the clouds by the propulsion of his own jump boots. Placing his life in the hands of another pilot did not rest well with him.

The elite soldiers of the White Fang weren't helping matters at all. Icarus knew that they were selected for loyalty as well as skill, which meant that he was basically the only non-fanatic on this aircraft. They wore more elaborate versions of the combat uniform that their rank-and-file brethren wore, the difference being that they wore a loose-fitting black bodysuit and a full face mask - rather like Banesaw's own mask, but somewhat bluntly pointed downwards like the beak of a parrot. Their coats also had a longer hem, reaching down almost to their kneecaps. They were also better armoured and armed, befitting of their status as elite soldiers.

"You know your place in this plan," he heard Noctis's voice brief them over the comms. "You secure the freighter and make sure that it does not escape out to sea. After that, you hold it and provide fire support for the others at the docks if necessary. That is all."

The intercom then cut off, leaving the soldiers on board to prepare their weapons. Most of them were equipped with 5.56mm bullpup assault rifles - Steyr AUG A2s, upgraded versions of the older A1s that came with Picatinny rails - and even now some of them were calibrating the holographic sights that were attached. Others were fixing on the suppressors standard for this kind of mission over the barrel or were unfolding the foregrip that was usually folded under the barrel when not in use. Yet others carried MG3 machine guns with bipods attached, while some more soldiers were equipped with PzF 44 anti-tank rocket launchers.

It was unfortunate that he couldn't scope out the immediate area below with his rifle, but this particular model of Bullhead had a pressurised cabin and thus couldn't be opened on demand. No matter, he'd save it for when he found a suitable location to use as a sniper nest.

Surprisingly enough, he seemed to be the only officer around. He knew that Banesaw was still pretty much inconsolable over the loss of his squadron, and was thus wholly unsuited to such a delicate mission as this, but where was Adam? Never mind for now.

Icarus heard the electronic whirring of a hatch on the chin of the Bullhead opening and something within lowering out, before he heard what he knew to be a remotely operated 20mm auto-cannon turret start to spin up. Pretty much every Bullhead meant for use by the military or police, or any sort of armed forces for that matter, was armed like this. The cabin depressurised as two side doors opened, revealing the landing pad below.

Thankfully the co-pilot hadn't decided to fire yet, because the security guards on the helipad - a group of seven - gathered below them were barely guards at all. Sure, they were technically guards, but only like how a mall cop was technically a police officer. Armed only with pistols - snub-nosed .38 revolvers that stood little to no chance of actually penetrating his aura - and not even wearing any sort of armour, they hardly warranted the firepower that the White Fang had brought to bear for this particular mission. They didn't even have aura.

"Drop your weapons!" Icarus yelled, his voice straining to be heard over the drone of the engines. "Stand down, put your hands above your head, and you will be spa-"

He was interrupted by the auto-cannon opening fire, unleashing a hail of fire that lasted for barely a second but was still enough to cut down all the guards. After the last of the unfortunate security personnel collapsed to the ground, their bodies torn to shreds by multiple rifle-calibre rounds, the Bullhead's pilot finally decided to land on the helipad of the freighter. The soldiers equipped solely with assault rifles jumped out of the Bullhead before taking point for those handling the heavier weaponry.

"Golem One has reached LZ. Securing LZ for Golem Two and Mage Team," the pilot called out. The co-pilot on the other hand was retracting the chin-mounted Minigun turret, which drew back into the chin of the aircraft before it landed proper on the helipad. Those manning the RPGs and MGs now got off the Bullhead, the weight of their weapons preventing them from jumping out like their comrades had done.

"Roger. Golem Two en route. They will secure Mage Team's LZ. Concentrate on securing the freighter first."

"Wilco. Taking off to provide CAS now," Golem One's pilot responded, before taking off once more.

Close air support was always welcome, especially since the freighter was so exposed it basically stuck out like a sore thumb. A single machine gun nest set up by Vale's PD could effectively cover all the walkways on the port side - the side facing the docks now - of the freighter.

Icarus cast a glance at the seven dead guards. The dead almost never looked peaceful, especially those who had died violently. It was always those who never expected their deaths who looked the most devilish, and this was one prime example. They look, frankly, shocked and betrayed. He sighed sadly.

There had been a time when peaceful protest had once been the modus operandi of the White Fang. However, when Ghira and Kali had stepped down and let Sierra and her band of fascist sycophants take over, the White Fang had started to shoot first and proclaim equality later. Again and again, they had escalated. First against the SDC's usage of Faunus labour, then against Atlas when they had decided to defend the world's largest supplier of dust. Silber Squadron was formed in a response that had escalated to the point that the White Fang had basically become a paramilitary terrorist organisation devoted solely to violence in the name of 'liberation'.

Never mind that for now. He was hardly the right person to be pondering such things, and this was hardly the right time.

Icarus input the requisite commands into his wrist-mounted scroll interface, the leg-mounted thrusters - each mounted on a frame attached to his lower legs and containing a vectored-thrust engine for both stability and manoeuvrability - bursting into life. He sprung off of the helipad, his jump boots propelling him up into the air towards the bridge.

Internally, he thanked the kind inventor who had been there to slap together the ad-hoc prototype that he had used all those years ago. His name, however… it started with an A… Arthur? Arthur Watts? Was that his name?

He landed on an external deck next to the bridge of the freighter, his ghillie cloak billowing around him as he did. He had to immobilise the ship first, so that it would not break off from the docks and take their target with it. He drew his rifle, preparing to activate his semblance as he did.

Icarus watched as four fully outfitted guards ran out of the bridge and onto the deck, where they now faced him. Two of them had shock batons and clear rectangular riot shields, while the other two hung behind their colleagues with submachine guns - Uzis, not very accurate but very reliable indeed. All four of them were armoured this time, with Kevlar vests that would resist the blade of his glaive somewhat. Still, none of them even had aura.

One of the melee-equipped guards charged first, raising a baton that crackled with bright blue streaks of electricity. Icarus blocked it with the shaft of his glaive, before using said shaft to bash the unprotected face of the guard. Getting a clear line of sight, one of the guards with a submachine gun opened fire. Icarus, dodging the burst of rounds with the help of his semblance, leapt backwards with the help of his jump boots, kicking up… dove feathers… with the backdraft. It was rather ironic, to be honest. It was rather similar to Ruby's semblance leaving behind rose petals, but the feathers spontaneously generated by his semblance served as a constant mocking reminder of what he had lost.

He landed just at the edge of the deck, transforming his glaive back into its sniper rifle form before raising it and firing off a shot. The .338 Lapua round punched through the clear material of a riot shield, shattering the material like glass, before violently blowing out the back of one of the guards's heads into red mist and fragments of bone. All this, from the gunshot to the gruesome result, happened in such a natural manner, to Icarus at least, that his blood ran cold.

The now very dead guard dropped bodily to the ground, the other three displaying various reactions of surprised terror. He transformed his rifle back into a glaive, knowing that it would take too much time and effort to work the bolt and chamber a new round.

He moved with the grace of one who had been in the business of conflict for years, swinging his blade at one of the guards with submachine guns. The blade caught him in the side, the Kevlar vest providing some resistance to what would have been otherwise a smooth cut as the blade slipped between his ribs to slice into his chest cavity.

The guard staggered, his blood-flecked scream of agony silenced utterly by Icarus bringing the butt of his glaive up and driving the metal spike that adorned it through the man's temple and into his skull.

He swooped down to snatch the submachine gun out of the man's dying grasp with his left hand, before bringing it up and firing it at the other gun-wielding guard. A burst to the third guard's head brought him down as well, but when Icarus turned to shoot the fourth guard his shots were blocked by the man's riot shield. The gun soon clicked empty, and Icarus tossed it aside before grabbing the haft of his glaive in a two-handed grip.

He blocked the baton swing with the now bloody spike-tipped butt of his glaive, narrowly dodging another swing of the weapon which was crackling with electricity, before bringing the blade of his glaive down. However, the guard managed to deflect the blow with his shield before using it to bash Icarus away and off his feet to leave him sprawled on the floor. He rolled to his feet, narrowly avoiding a golf swing sent down at his prone form. A wide horizontal sweep served to clear the space in front of him so that the advantage of range his polearm had over the guard's baton could come into its own.

"Not bad. Not bad at all," the guard rumbled, his voice constricted with anger. "I'd expect nothing less from Daedalus."

"You recognise me?" Icarus asked evenly, spinning the glaive deftly to remove the traces of blood and more solid matter from the weapon. "Looks like I missed one."

"Should have checked that no one was breathing, huh?" The guard replied, baring his teeth as he did. He bashed his baton against his shield, roaring with pure rage as he did.

"Too late for that now," Icarus replied emotionlessly, returning to one of his more preferred combat stances. "All there is left to do now is to correct my mistakes."

The guard, managing a remarkably accurate impression of a blood-crazed berserker, tried to keep the pressure on him by rushing in behind the cover of his shield, but the additional distance gave Icarus time to slip behind and slash him in the back. However, the Kevlar vest he wore provided enough resistance to ensure that the injury wasn't fatal or even incapacitating. The guard stumbled forward, before whipping around to face him. He swung his baton yet again, and Icarus deflected the strike before getting into the man's guard and bringing the blade of his glaive up into the guard's right armpit.

The plan was to cut the tendons in the man's shoulder and immobilise his arm, but what actually happened was that he cut cleanly through his arm. The surprise dismemberment staggered the guard, and he stumbled once or twice before the blood loss from where his right arm used to be caused him to collapse to his knees. Despite the fact that he was now rapidly bleeding out and resting most of his weight on his riot shield, the guard somehow found the strength to look up and stare defiantly at Icarus.

"Fuck you," he spat, trying to get back up to his feet to continue the fight before collapsing back down to the floor when he found his remaining strength insufficient to do so. "This isn't over!"

Icarus stared despondently at the guard's gaze of pain and rage. "It is," he muttered, before he swung his glaive once more to behead the other man. This time, the loose end was tied up.

Four bodies more left in his wake, he thought. He reached down to pick up one of the submachine guns, taking a spare magazine from a bandolier belonging to one of the dead guards before reloading the gun.

Clearing the bridge was almost insultingly easy, the security team within having been made up of all of four guards. Four recently deceased guards. It was seamless, burst after precise burst cutting down crew members and eventually the captain himself. Sure, they had attempted to resist with the sidearms they had in their possession, but they had eventually all been silenced. Icarus switched off his semblance, and his perception of time resumed its normal flow.

"Freighter secure," he said, reaching up to the side of his helmet to open up his comms. "Golem Two, Mage Team, time to move in."

"Roger that, Daedalus. Golem Two en route. Ahab and Ishmael arriving to assist."

The private channel that Noctis and Carmine shared with him opened up to override the general comms.

"Icarus, set up a sniper nest at the bridge," Noctis instructed. "Cover the docks but if any Beacon students show up, do _not_ shoot to kill."

"I concur," Carmine said. "I for one do not want to explain to Professor Goodwitch why one of our classmates has suddenly discovered their newfound lack of a head. The paperwork alone would curse us for the next century at least."

"Wilco, and likewise for you two as well. Don't get too trigger happy," he replied, before transforming his glaive back to its rifle form. He propped up the bipod of his sniper rifle on one of the workstations, pushing aside the bloodsoaked body of a crewman still slumped over his monitor before peering through his scope. His ghillie cloak crumpled over his form as it was meant to do, distorting his profile and making him appear - to anything barring intense scrutiny, at least - like one of the houseplants decorating the bridge. Through the high-powered telescopic sight, he managed to see Golem Two land.

Noctis was at the front lines, in command of the situation, and his partner was at his side to keep order and discipline. As usual. He may as well play his part.

Their team, despite everything, had managed to stick together. Still, that… book they had found worried him somehow. The Necronomicon or whatever it was called was filled with gibberish as far as he was concerned. They had collected the sap from Forever Fall for the elixir they had been planning to make, and even now it was sitting in jars slowly fermenting into some sort of… alcohol? He wasn't sure, but they had called off the elixir production after Carmine had translated one of the ingredients on the list as _human spinal fluid_. No one wanted to drink it at all after _that_ particular revelation.

So what if he didn't have a hyper-advanced suit of power armour like Lapis did? So what if he couldn't teleport while cloning himself or command and coordinate soldiers on the field like Noctis could? So what if he wasn't able to hack into computers or understand the weird language that the book they had retrieved from the tomb was written in like Carmine could? He wasn't an unstoppable juggernaut with anger issues, neither was he a teleporting bodyguard-cum-tactician who was also a borderline sociopath nor was he the humble knightly scion of what was rapidly becoming the most powerful entity in Remnant.

He was an assassin, a sniper, plain and simple. He did his job well, and he'd do all he could to keep it that way.

"Go ahead, I'm watching your backs," he whispered.

"Sure, watching the backs of our heads through that crosshair of yours," Noctis snarked. "Nah, I'm kidding. Thanks, Icarus. Your oversight is appreciated."

These were his teammates, Icarus decided, and he'd kill to keep it that way.

/-/

Blake was regretting her decision to stakeout the freighter more every second. Sure, she had assumed that the White Fang would take the bait and try to steal the dust, but she had not anticipated that they'd pull out all the stops just to guarantee mission success.

"Holy shit… is that them?" Sun whispered frantically. "I've never seen them pack so much firepower before."

Blake couldn't help but agree. They didn't even seem like the main force, more like a forward team, but even then they were already packing machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. Only one Bullhead had landed as of now on the helipad of the freighter, but even so the soldiers it had brought were now rapidly clearing out the decks of the ship. As for the bridge… well, she couldn't see precisely who it was, but whoever was at the bridge itself was effectively wiping out all the crew there.

"Damn it," Sun swore. "They've cleaned out the ship."

"Hold on," Blake said. "There's another Bullhead coming in to land."

It flew in to land at the docks itself, a bunch of White Fang soldiers - normal infantry, not elite soldiers - jumping out. She ignored them. What had caught her interest was the two officers that leapt out after their subordinates.

One was wearing a dark grey greatcoat that swayed in the chilly seaside breeze, and even from up on the rooftop Blake could see the lenses of his skull-visaged mask gleam in the searchlights of the circling aircraft. He seemed to raise a hand to the side of his helmet, before Blake's enhanced hearing - courtesy of her cat ears - heard Noctis say "Secure the perimeter. Make sure nothing that doesn't belong to us gets in or out of the AO unless I say so."

His partner landed with an ungainly clank, doubtlessly caused by her knightly suit of plate armour. A blue and gold surcoat with the two emaciated hounds of Cainhurst shifted as the knight reached to her back to pull a long silver cross between a zweihander and a claymore out of a sheath there. The contraption on her left gauntlet flared to life, manifesting a convex disk made of interlocked hexagonal plates of hardlight, slightly more than a metre in diameter, that shimmered in the salty air of the docks.

"Remember, even one of our Bullheads right now is worth more than all of your lives combined," Carmine said sternly, her tone all business. "If even one gets shot down because you or your comrades messed up, I shall personally arrange a firing squad for everyone present. The White Fang has a surplus of basic combat personnel, which means that you are _disposable_ if proven inadequate. Do you understand?"

Why were Noctis and Carmine here, directing the White Fang?

"Do you know these guys?" Sun asked concernedly. "You know, the skull-faced guy and the knight?"

"I… do," Blake said hesitantly. "They're Beacon students. At least, I thought they were."

She turned back to look at the scene below them. Now that the forward team had effectively neutralised any sort of resistance that the freighter's crew could have put up, the main bulk of the incoming forces could now move with impunity. Their priority seemed to be securing the dust containers, securing them to tow cables attached to the undersides of the Bullheads for subsequent aerial transport.

"It's a simple snatch and grab, so why did the elite soldiers come out to play?" Sun wondered aloud.

"I don't know. It could be that they were worried about the fleet Atlas sent to Vale for the Vytal Festival," Blake replied.

"Probably, but what does that have to do with that light they put in the bridge?"

"What light? The bridge is all dark."

"There! I saw it flash again!" Sun whispered urgently, pointing at one of the windows facing them. Blake's gaze followed his finger before it recoiled in surprised horror. That wasn't an artificial light, that was the ambient light reflecting off of a lens. The lens of a scope.

Blake was about to holler 'sniper' and drag Sun into cover with her when something whizzed past her head so fast that she felt more than heard the whistle of displaced air, before it smashed into the roof with the loud crack of concrete shattering. A resounding crack followed soon after.

"What the fuck was that?" Sun yelped, scrambling away from where the bullet had hit. "Dammit, they have snipers?"

"No, only one sniper. Still, that was a warning shot. I'm sure of that."

"Why?"

"Because the only time this sniper misses is if he does it on purpose," Blake said grimly.

Two more Bullheads flew down to the docks, one dropping yet another load of grunts while the second one landed proper on a clearing in the middle of the containers. A worryingly familiar mop of shockingly orange hair sauntered out, its owner swinging his cane around and whistling to a tune only he knew.

"Hey! What's the holdup?" The man Blake recognised as Roman Torchwick hollered. "We're not exactly the most inconspicuous bunch of thieves at the moment, so why don't you animals try to pick up the pace?"

Blake got up from lying prone on the rooftop to a low crouch. "This isn't right," she mused, unsheathing Gambol Shroud. "The White Fang would never work with a human. Especially not one like that."

"Hey, what are you doing?" Sun hissed. "Are you insane? There's a goddamn sniper right there!"

Blake ignored him, leaping from the rooftop to the ground in a graceful arc before silently landing behind one of the containers in a crouch.

"Are you sure that you saw _her_? It could have been anyone from that distance," she overheard Noctis ask warily.

"It's her," Icarus's familiar voice, somewhat faint due to it coming from Noctis's comms bead, said. "Don't worry, I've already marked her with my semblance. I'll keep you updated on the positions of her and her friend, but be warned that she's moving in towards Roman."

"Roger. Moving to intercept before things get out of control."

Shit. Their cover was blown. Ah well, she was in too deep now to back out. Blake weaved quietly through the myriad passageways and shortcuts that the docks provided for her, using her weapon's kusarigama form as a grappling hook to swing off of the many cranes surrounding the area. Soon, she was near enough to Roman to carry out her plan.

"No, you idiot! This isn't a leash!" He yelled, slapping his free hand to his face. Blake took the chance to slip behind him and put her blade to his throat. "What the… Oh, for f-" he sputtered, before Blake cut him off.

"Nobody move!" She yelled. However, no one seemed to care. Blake saw multiple two-man teams manning machine guns turn their weapons in her direction, while one of the White Fang soldiers reached for the comm bead in his ear.

"Ahab? We have a situation here. A Huntress just took Roman hostage. We're at the cargo bay."

"Whoa!" Roman exclaimed casually. "Take it easy there, little lady."

Blake reached up to her ribbon in response, yanking it off to reveal two black cat ears. "Brothers of the White Fang! Why are you aiding this scum?" She yelled, drawing from her years as a lieutenant to project authority. The normal rank-and-file soldiers wavered somewhat, but the elite soldiers on the ship didn't even flinch - which meant that she was still staring down multiple machine gun nests. Not the best of odds.

"Oh, kid, didn't you get the memo?" Roman asked mockingly. "The White Fang and I are going in on a joint business venture together!"

"Tell me what it is or I'll put an end to your little operation," Blake growled. Suddenly she felt a hand - prosthetic, evident from the lack of body heat - grab the back of her collar with unforgiving clamp-like strength, before she was torn off Roman and thrown backwards. She sprawled onto the ground, the suddenness of her involuntary airtime preventing her usual graceful landing.

"A _little_ operation? I feel insulted, especially since I planned the whole thing," a dreadfully familiar voice, muffled by a familiar yet inhuman gas mask and skull-visaged faceplate, intoned with uncanny cheer. The sound of metal sliding against metal grated against her sensitive hearing, before the point of Sable Lament was pointed straight at her face.

"I would ask you to leave but, knowing you, you surely wouldn't," he said. Noctis paused, drawing his parrying dagger and yet keeping her at sword-point in one fluid movement. "Please, forgive me."

Damn his one liners. Why were they so bad? Even Adam was better than him in that regard. Blake almost wished that Lapis had killed her two days ago. Almost. She brandished Gambol Shroud, the katana and cleaver blade raised in defiance.

Blake moved first, disappearing into a blur of afterimages as her katana and cleaver blade danced in a whirlwind of swings that Noctis was somewhat able to dodge and parry - she managed to get in a few solid hits at his aura before he really got into form - despite the constant deluge of illusory decoys she left behind, before Noctis activated the inbuilt flamethrower in his arm and brought it up to her face.

"I've got you now," he growled, before a torrent of flame engulfed her entire body and burned away at her aura. Even with her aura at almost full capacity, she could still feel the heat from the flamethrower on her body as she realised her mistake. She had tried to beat someone with a cloning semblance at their own game, and had done the exact same thing that his ash clones did better. No wonder she had failed.

"Seriously?" He asked vindictively, watching as Blake rolled on the ground in an attempt to put out the fire that even now was still burning away at her aura. "Those clones weren't even convincing. They were static images, for fuck's sake."

She rolled onto her feet, slashing at him with her katana. He casually dodged the swing, before opening the blade of his main gauche up and using the blade catchers to intercept a follow-up swing from the cleaver blade in Blake's left hand.

"Why are you here?" She asked, her voice coming out in a yell.

"Roman hired us. We're just satisfying our half of the agreement," he replied, before thrusting with his rapier, the point of his sword burying itself in her aura over her stomach. "This isn't personal, in case you were wondering," he continued.

She hunched over in pain, giving Noctis the opportunity to twist her left hand with the grip she had on her own caught blade before smashing his prosthetic elbow into her face. He sheathed his rapier before she saw him reach for a grenade at his waist, before deftly flicking out the pin with his right hand.

Shit, she thought, he's cloned himself and teleported somewhere.

She looked around with wide panicked eyes, internally dreading that she would find him behind her already rearing back for a stab, before she found him a fair distance off speaking into the headset of his helmet.

"Daedalus, it's Ahab here," he said into the comms. "Can you help me cover the dry docks for a bit?"

The clone, meanwhile, grabbed Blake in a chokehold with its free prosthetic hand before it raised the grenade just in front of her face.

"No, no! Why are you working with them?" She asked, wide-eyed and struggling frantically. The clone stared into her panicked gaze with an almost mournful look in its eyes, before the grenade - still in the solid grip of the ash clone - detonated in a ball of fire and a spray of metal shrapnel. Blake was sent flying out of the smoke and ash, her aura having taken a severe hit even before she practically bounced on the cold concrete towards the clearing of the dry docks.

Blake stumbled to her feet at the side of the dry docks, in which it appeared that a large commercial whaling vessel was under repair if the hole in its hull - probably courtesy of marine conservation activists - was any indication. She looked around, her ears still ringing painfully from the blast, trying to regain her bearings. Where was Sun anyways?

"Yeah, you see me there? And do you see Blake? I just need her spooked into leaving the AO, so just set a cannon shell to airburst. Remember, we can't risk killing anyone related to Beacon," Noctis said into the comms. "Got her in your sights? Good. Take the shot."

Then a cannon shell - not a bullet, since bullets don't explode in mid-air - exploded next to her, sending out a starburst of shrapnel that peppered her aura. Another resounding crack followed up from the shot, which was all but guaranteed to be Icarus's handiwork. Luckily there was a wealth of cover provided by random construction materials lying around, so she ducked behind a stack of metal plates tied down on a pallet before the next one came.

"Daedalus, cease fire," she heard Noctis state into his comms. "I'm going in."

She peeked out from behind her cover, watching him pull another grenade from his belt and throw it at a cluster of barrels roughly in front of her. The grenade exploded, turning the wooden barrels into nothing but splinters and fragments of wood. Another grenade landed on top of some large piece of machinery covered in plastic, before detonating and sending pieces of metal and circuitry flying everywhere.

"Blake, just surrender already, alright? Sooner or later I'm gonna flush you out, and when I do you know you won't win," Noctis called out, throwing a third grenade that, this time, landed right next to her.

Blake lost her nerve. She leapt out from behind her cover, just in time to avoid the blast of the grenade, and sprinted towards her opponent. Her kusurigama closed the distance, the ribbon wrapping around Noctis's ankle under the greatcoat and threatening to pull his feet out from under him before the ribbon simply cut through his form with a puff of ash.

Retribution arrived soon after, when the cold metal of a gun's muzzle placed itself between her shoulder blades and fired. The buckshot slammed her forward, her aura protecting her from any real harm, and she used the momentum to roll to her feet. Apparently his trident parrying dagger could transform as well, this time into the bastard child of a sawn-off shotgun and a flintlock pistol with a bit of steampunk flair added in for good measure.

Blake transformed Gambol Shroud again into its katana and cleaver blade, before swinging the cleaver blade at his helmeted head. He parried away the strike with his rapier, responding with a riposte to her torso roughly where her lungs were. A follow-up strike flicked her across the face, her already strained aura absorbing most of the damage, but still allowing a rather deep cut to open up on her cheek. Her katana in response slashed across Noctis's own torso with a puff of ash, revealing that he had at some point teleported away.

A massive explosion not far away startled them both, as well as a massive column of smoke that glowed orange from a blazing fire within. Noctis raised his hand up to his helmet's headset once more, this time flicking a switch that was most probably meant to keep the channel open without him having to press down on the main button to keep the headset on.

"What the hell was that?" He asked angrily. "What do you mean, Roman accidentally set off a container? Carmine? What do you mean, there is another Huntsmen now? You and Roman are fighting him?" She heard Noctis ask. "Okay, there's the monkey Faunus that Icarus told us about… anyone else? No? Great. We can still handle this, I think."

Shit. Looks like Sun had decided to jump in after all, and had ended up fighting either Carmine or Roman. She didn't fancy his chances with either of them.

"What are you going to do, huh? Blow him up like what you tried to do to me?" Blake asked accusingly.

"It's part of the job. If they try to blow us up first, who are we to deny them a good fight? Anyway, you should leave. It's not safe here."

"Then what are _you_ here for?" She retorted. "Directing the White Fang like you're their commanding officer, raiding a freighter along with Roman Torchwick of all people, what are you doing?"

"Ozpin put us up to this," Noctis said calmly. "Black ops, he said, to try and infiltrate them and find out what they're really planning to do with all this dust."

"Bullshit."

"I'm not bullshitting, I swear. This robbery would have happened anyway if we weren't here. We just decided to tag along and lend a hand."

"God damn it! Now you're confusing me," Blake said, raising her hand to cradle her forehead. "First you get Lapis to try and kill me-"

"We didn't." Noctis interrupted. "We knew there was a White Fang infiltrator in the school since we found that mask in Forever Fall - we didn't know it was you at the time - and so since there haven't been any attempts made on Weiss's life yet, we decided that we would arrest the infiltrator if we ever found out their identity. Lapis acted independently, of her own accord and against what we had decided upon. To be honest, whatever happened was our fault since we forgot to keep her in the loop."

"But-"

"You thought that Weiss hated the White Fang with a passion? Well, you're right in a way, but I'm sure that her sense of justice has already won out. She saved your life on Friday, did she not?"

"Lapis was trying to kill Ruby and Yang," Blake protested.

"That aside, Weiss could well have killed you that day and you know that. How hard would it have been for her to immobilise you long enough for Lapis to do it for her? How hard would it have been for her to conveniently slip up and leave you exposed for the crazy girl in power armour to smear into meat paste? Not hard at all, trust me. You eventually learn how easy to kill someone and get away scot free when you've been working to stop people from doing the same to someone for years."

Blake paused for a while, before sputtering. "How does that even factor into you getting me to leave? Are you trying to guilt-trip me into running off?"

"I actually am, so God help me!" Noctis snapped, advancing forwards towards the now retreating girl before him. "Your teammates have been looking for you for the entire weekend! I swear to God that the first thing they did once the doctors patched them up was to mount a search! And where were you? Playing detective with that monkey boy that Carmine's now fighting, and hiding because you were scared of the people that saved your life! Get a fucking grip!"

Blake flinched, saying nothing in response. Noctis stepped back, seemingly realising how close he had gotten to violating her personal space.

"Look, I'm sorry if I seemed a bit harsh just now. It's just that I'm under orders not to allow any third parties to get involved in this. Please, just leave before you get hurt," he said, sheathing his rapier and transforming his pistol back into a parrying dagger before sheathing that as well.

"Then what about the people on the freighter? I saw shooting on board. What happens to them, to innocents that 'get in the way' like them?"

Noctis transformed his sheathed rapier into a rifle, connected to some sort of electronic apparatus on his back by a set of thick cables. What was concerning about this particle firearm was that the barrel shroud seemed to be a coolant tank, owing to the swirls of condensed water vapour coming off it. What kind of rifle needed coolant to function?

"It is unfortunate, yes, but war is war," he said, shrugging. "They were in our way, and thus we took action to clear our own way. Of course, we won't go out of our way to cause more bloodshed," he continued, looked directly at Blake, impaling her gaze on those baleful black eyes. "Seriously, you really should get going now. We're scuttling the freighter, and if you're in the blast zone you're bound to get hurt. You should get Ruby to leave as well."

"What?" Blake yelled, grabbing a handful of Noctis's coat. "You're sinking the ship? In the harbour? Are you insane?"

"Firstly, it was Adam's idea," Noctis said, rolling his eyes with clear annoyance. "Secondly, this is war. If we can't have the dust, then no one can. It's called waging a war of attrition."

Blake sighed. "Look, just make sure that people don't get hurt unnecessarily, alright? I know that Adam might be pressuring you guys to go after civilians to send a message, but please just don't listen to him. He's been labelled a terrorist for a reason."

"I can tell. He nearly ripped my damn head off for asking why you weren't at base yesterday. Don't you think he's just a _bit_ obsessed over you?"

"That… was one reason why I left."

"Well, if you need any help with that all you need to do is ask," Noctis said, his voice sounding as if he were smiling behind his mask. "Now I really should get going before another Bullhead gets shot down, but so far it seems that Carmine and Icarus are doing a good enough job at stopping that." He turned back to Blake, his eyes twinkling kindly behind the lenses of his gas mask. "See you around, Blake. Next time you want to spar, all you need to do is ask. Today was fun, if I were being honest, but a bit impromptu."

"Wait, what?" Blake asked confusedly, still applying pressure to the cut on her face to stop the steady trickle of blood that leaked out.. "You talk about us fighting as if it were a date…"

"Maybe it was," Noctis said, flicking the safety of his rifle off and peering behind him before waving goodbye. "But maybe it wasn't."

"What?" Blake raised her voice in confusion, rushing to grab his collar to stop him and enquire further. However, all she got was a handful of ash as the clone disintegrated in the wind.

Blake was confused, partly since she was still dazed from the grenade blast, but mostly because of the conversation. He had blasted her through the air with a grenade exploding point blank in her face. And then he had tried, in his own frankly unusual way, to flirt with her.

Maybe it was the leftover adrenaline from the fight, or something else entirely, but she didn't find the idea bad at all. In fact, it was quite welcome. At least Noctis was a perfect gentleman - albeit slightly immature at times - when not in combat. But on the other hand, it was Noctis, the leader of the team with a body count higher than that of the rest of the cohort combined. Mostly, it was because most other people felt at least slightly bad over killing another human being. Noctis didn't show any signs of regret at all, neither at the deaths of the crew on the freighter nor at the girl whom he had ordered anti-tank weapons to be fired at.

Was that his sociopathy shining through there?

Ruby has told her - well, she had told the team - about what exactly Noctis had confided in her about his semblance's side effects. It turned out that his mind literally fragmented every time he made a clone, so that he could control both the clone and his real body. Most of it stayed in his real body, but each and every clone he left behind contained an ever so slight sliver of his mind. Individually that wasn't a problem, but thousands of them? Tens of thousands? It was a marvel that Noctis was still as human as he was.

There was a reason why most cloning semblances favoured one side or the other. Her decoys were just static images because controlling both herself and those decoys would have been too much of a strain on her mind. Sun's semblance, which he had showed off to her in a bare-faced attempt to flirt that was quickly put down, forced him to stand still and concentrate to manifest and control multiple clones at the same time.

To top that all off, neither of them teleported as part of their semblance. Noctis did.

At this point, only God knew exactly how much his brain had changed itself to accommodate those capabilities. How drastically had his mind been twisted to adapt to the gradual fragmentation of what made Noctis his own self?

How much of Noctis was still there, and how much of it was a mask meant to fill up the empty spaces left behind? She'd tried to act as a confidante once before, to Adam, and failed utterly to get him out of the downward spiral of violence he had plunged himself into. Now he was a blood-drunk terrorist who was a risk to innocent people the world over.

Maybe she'd fail again. Maybe Noctis would become nothing but a serial killer slaughtering people just because it was all that he remembered of himself. But she hoped she wouldn't. She didn't want him to become just another Adam, just another failure to her name. Maybe all Noctis needed was someone to talk to, to confide in.

Who knows? Maybe he'd get better.

/-/

Carmine had not expected this. When she was in Cainhurst, all she had expected of the Waking World was to hunt both Beasts and Hunters in a quest to bring He Immortal Queen back to her former glory. She had definitely not expected to be forced into what was essentially a glorified university for aspiring super-soldiers with powers - semblances, that was what they called their abilities here - that shredded anything even resembling physics on a daily basis.

She certainly didn't expect to end up fighting a boy with a monkey tail. She also didn't expect to end up trying to cover a crime boss's escape from said monkey boy with her eardrums blown to shreds and desperately trying to recover because the crime boss had been _slightly_ too trigger-happy around volatile cargo. But most of all, she hadn't been expecting to have to give flirting advice to someone assigned to be a peer leader of sorts.

"Look, all I am saying is that it was extremely sudden for you to do that. Perhaps it was because of the adrenaline?" She said, blocking a flurry of blows from the nunchucks of the monkey boy with her energy shield as she did. "What do you people call it? Being 'hot and bothered'?"

"Okay, fine. Probably it was my semblance making me not think straight."

"Do not blame everything on your semblance, o leader of mine. Blame your lack of social skills and a complete ignorance of context."

A flurry of blows bounced off of the disk of hardlight over her wrist, and Carmine slammed her opponent with a quick activation of her energy shield to send him flying back. She grasped the hilt with both hands and swung her sword, hacking into the back of the boy's leg and bringing him to one knee, before she spun around and violently brought the sword around to the back of his neck. He flew off his feet, punted forward by the hit, and Carmine advanced towards his prone form.

An explosion in the sky jolted her out of her stance and when she turned to look, she saw one of the Bullheads hurtle towards the ground with one engine burning and the other blown off entirely.

"Shit!" She heard Noctis curse some distance behind her, having teleported there apparently to respond to the situation over the comms. "Golem Two! Golem Two, respond! Dammit! I want everything we have to open fire on that girl with the swords, because she's the only threat to our escape craft now! MGs, RPGs, every single damn thing, I just want her neutralised!"

The girl with the swords? What?

"Noctis, I want a status update and I want it now."

"Alright. Apparently the explosion Roman caused with the dust container drew the attention of our scythe-wielding friend Ruby as well as her new friend. What I did not anticipate was that her new friend is the equivalent of a walking anti-air turret! Get over here now and assist Roman!"

She turned back to the monkey boy. "Please leave. I simply do not have the time for the likes of you."

"What if I don't?" He snapped. "Where's Blake?"

In response, Carmine plunged the blade of her sword into her own abdomen.

"W-what the fuck?" The monkey boy yelled. "Holy shit!"

His screams only became louder when her Seraphim's power revealed itself, a spike of crystallised blood ripping through her skin as she ripped out a lengthened blade made entirely of hardened viscera and gore. The eyes on the blade stared balefully at her now pale-faced opponent. However, the monkey boy seemed to swallow his fear.

"You're not gonna intimidate me that easily, alright?" He said unsteadily, snapping his nunchucks together to form a bo-staff. "You want a fight? You've got it right here."

He charged in, his bo-staff swinging downwards in an overhead swing that Carmine dodged. The energy in the blow snapped into the concrete, pulverising it in a thundercrack that echoed like a gunshot. Carmine replied with a swing that slammed into his ribs and sent him flying into a stack of shipping containers. Sure, her semblance wasn't exactly physics-breaking, but most probably having a weapon cursed by the gods themselves was enough to even the score.

"As I said, I seriously do not have time for this," she said irritatedly, swinging her sword to the side. The tumour-blade shrank back into the silvery metal of the blade proper. Carmine flipped the now relatively normal zweihander in her hand to hold it by the blade, idly swinging the hefty pommel of her own design through the air as she advanced towards him once more.

The monkey boy struggled to his feet once more. "F-fuck you," he muttered under his breath, trying and failing to raise his staff to defend himself.

Carmine raised her now inverted and brought the pommel down on his head as an improvised hammer - the _mordhau_ technique, as it was known. She brought the weighted pommel down again and again like the wrath of the gods themselves, ignoring his begging for mercy that started after the third or fourth blow. Eventually though, he collapsed to the ground and finally stayed down.

Concussing someone into unconsciousness was efficient and practical, albeit slightly dangerous. Too vigorous or too frequent application might just end up smashing the patient's skull like an eggshell. He was still breathing, though, so he probably wasn't dead. Probably.

She ran over to the front of the docks and found a warzone. Roman was dueling with Ruby once again, his cane deflecting blows of the latter's scythe at such a speed that both their weapons were only blurs. White Fang soldiers littered the ground, some unconscious and some clearly dead, while tracers from the machine guns on the freighters flew into the chaos in an attempt to hit the enemy Huntsmen. The aforementioned sword-girl was controlling what must have been more than ten swords on wires attached to her back that she seemed to be able to control with the utmost ease. Occasionally the point of one of the swords would open before firing a green laser that would without fail hit its target, be it an unfortunate White Fang soldier or an incoming rocket fired from the freighter's decks.

Carmine pulled the sheath of her Seraphim off of her back, transforming it to its one-handed LMG- _kurz_ form before allowing the curse to consume it and engulf her arm. She raised her arm, taking aim, before a beam of crimson arcane energy burst out and sent Ruby flying away.

"Remember the plan, Roman! Take the dust and go!" She hollered into the comms. "Ahab and I do not require extraction!"

"Are you sure?" He asked, already turning to leave.

"Very sure! Hurry up and evacuate already!"

One of the Bullheads flew above the docks, its auto-cannon already spitting out a stream of rounds that managed to find their target.

"This is Mage One. Providing CAS now," the pilot said triumphantly into the comms.

"Dammit!" Noctis yelled, dashing past to get behind a concrete barrier. "Get out of here now before you get shot down!"

A shield made of interlocking swords blocked the bullets. Two swords to her sides raised themselves to point at the overhead aircraft before firing their lasers. Both connected with one of the aircraft's engines, causing it to burst into flame and explode.

"Fuck! I'm going down! Going to attempt a water landing!" Mage One's pilot said, his aircraft pitching down before splashing into the cold seawater of the harbour.

Carmine stalked forwards, the actinic red light of Noctis's laser rifle discharging off to her left glaring into her peripheral vision. She toggled on her comms. "Roman, take whatever dust you can still get and go! We cannot risk failing our mission!" She shouted.

"Wilco. Evacuating ASAP. You sure you don't need evac?"

"Pretty sure. Our cover should hold," she said, raising her bolt pistol at Ruby's stumbling form. "Just focus on getting the cargo out of the Area of Operations."

"Alright then," Roman said. Carmine could _hear_ the man vocally shrug. "Just don't blame me when Goodwitch hauls your sorry ass off to detention, or worse. I used to study at Beacon too, you know?"

"Farewell, Roman. It was rather fun working with you," Carmine said with a smile on her face, before switching over to the private channel. The smile had just as quickily vanished. "Noctis, do the honours. Minimising casualties should be a priority of ours if we are to avoid the Deputy Headmistress's wrath."

She raised her arm-rifle, taking aim before the beam of red light bursting into life in front of Ruby gave Roman the chance to escape. The blood red beam of eldritch light separating the two was a good enough barrier, Carmine assumed.

"Very well," Noctis said, the crack of ionising air from his rifle creeping into the comms. "All White Fang personnel, including Daedalus, are to withdraw _now_. Bring back the wounded and the dead as well."

"Are you sure, Ahab?" One of the line grunts, a sergeant if Carmine wasn't wrong, asked. "Then who's gonna cover the withdrawal?"

"We shall hold the line, Ishmael and I. Now, that was an order. Get out of here while you still can."

"Roger that, sir," the lieutenant in charge of the elite White Fang soldiers said. "You two have earned the White Fang's respect today, and its gratitude. Good to see you back too, Daedalus. Looks like growing cabbages in Anima hasn't softened you yet."

"In my defense, they are pretty big cabbages," Icarus quipped. "I've got the sword girl in my sights. Do you want me to fire?"

"Don't. We can't be sure whether the shot will connect or not," Noctis said. "She's just blocked a minigun burst, after all. We can't risk you revealing your position."

The two remaining Bullheads, dust containers already hooked to their bellies, flew into position for evacuation. The fire from the machine guns stopped while rocket propelled grenades stopped being launched as their users, as well as Daedalus, were now getting onto Golem One. The remaining normal soldiers, as well as Roman, were getting into Mage Two.

It was a shame that Icarus couldn't join them, but they hadn't been able to come up with an excuse for him to join them. He was technically working for the White Fang again, and since Noctis and herself were working with Roman they had no say with anything on his side of thing. Carmine turned to the sword girl as the Bullheads finally started to take off, seeking to stop her from shooting them down as they fled.

"Hold your fire, please. They are evacuating the wounded, so if you shoot at them you are technically committing a war crime."

Carmine prepared to bring up her arm-tumour rifle in what would probably have been the most unadvised standoff of all time, with two of the other girl's swords already hovering over her shoulders in preparation to incinerate her, but she was interrupted by Ruby of all people. Good for her, too.

"Penny, calm down!" Ruby yelled frantically, speeding in with her semblance before things could get ugly. "They're not our enemy!"

"Ruby, are these people your friends?" The now named Penny asked.

"Yes, Penny. Friends who got mixed up in something they shouldn't have," Ruby said, before she sighed.

"Then where is Blake?" Penny replied.

"I'm here!" Blake suddenly cut in, stumbling in while still applying pressure to a cut on her cheek.

Carmine stared at Noctis in accusing shock. He had tried to flirt with her after doing _that_? Was he insane, or just aroused? No matter... she'd beat some sense into him yet.

Ruby reacted about as expected, shouting Blake's name excitedly before glomping her with her semblance.

"It appears that we have done at least one good deed among this mess we have made," Carmine noted.

"What?" Noctis said, chuckling as he did. "Reuniting our friends?"

"Affirmative. That and the fact that Blake at least trusts us somewhat."

Above the din of the Bullheads flying away and the wail of incoming sirens, Carmine heard Ruby yell, "You two still owe me an explanation!"

Noctis patted Carmine's back good-naturedly. "It's your turn now to explain, partner."

"Are you serious?" She deadpanned in response, the tumour on her arm already receding into nothing.

"I've already done my job explaining to Blake," the maddening man before her shrugged. "Also, you're explaining to Yang why you nearly shot her sister with a gun meant to kill _tanks_. I'll come by with a jam jar later to collect what's left. Or should I bring a test tube?"

"Damn you," Carmine grumbled. Still, she was in good spirits because of the successful mission. "Besides that, is there anything we can do for Blake's cut?"

"You want to try bleeding on it?" Noctis asked. "Not that she'd welcome it, of course."

"I may as well try," Carmine concluded, before walking away towards Blake.

She didn't like the idea of being a medical kit on legs, but at the rate her companions were being injured she might as well start now. She had always wondered why the wrists of her gauntlets had a panel that opened and closed with the press of a button, and now she knew.

"Hi, Carmine," Blake greeted her. "Thanks for getting the White Fang out of here, but I guess it was more because you guys had already gotten what you wanted."

"That is true, but the losses our new friend had inflicted here were also proving rather detrimental. Is there anything I can do for your cut?"

"Not really, no," Blake replied glumly. "Unless you have bandages and gauze with you?"

"Sorry, but I do not have those with me at the moment," Carmine said, reaching down to her lower right leg and drawing a boot knife strapped there before flipping it over to her left hand. "However, there is another possibility." She pressed a button on her right gauntlet, and a panel of armour covering her wrist slid open.

"What do you mean?" Blake asked hesitantly, staring at Carmine's now exposed wrist.

"I regenerate, remember? Perhaps my blood shall do for you what it has done for me," she replied offhandedly, searching for her radial artery. Finding the location she desired, she deftly flicked the knife down and slashed it open along her wrist bones. Blake flinched back with a look of shock on her face.

"I shall be fine, do not worry," Carmine continued. Why did she look so shocked? It honestly didn't hurt that much. "Besides, I have recovered from worse. Has Noctis ever told you about the time I had to regrow the upper half of my head when he shot it with a laser during Initiation?"

"Y-yes, but what does that have to do with my cut? Are you going to…?"

"Am I going to apply my blood on your cut? Yes. Now, stand still while I seal the cut. I assure you that the whole procedure is perfectly safe, with no possible side effects or complications."

The look on Blake's face, while absolutely priceless, seemed to adamantly disagree with her.

/-/

Well, this was it. Blake had been found after two days, or rather Noctis and Carmine had found her. The situation was still immensely complicated, but Ruby had texted her to say that the three members - including Icarus, who had been forced to leave with the White Fang - of the scarily efficient team that was team NICL were apparently working undercover. They said that they had been sent by Ozpin to investigate what the White Fang and Roman's gang of crooks were planning together. Blake and the monkey Faunus they had been chasing on Friday had apparently intervened to stop a dust robbery, and the rest as they say is history.

Yang was with her, her wounds having just recovered from the debacle that was Lapis freaking out over Blake's link with the White Fang. To be honest, it would honestly have been worse emotionally for everyone had Lapis not done what she had done. Despite the fact that everyone involved had been injured to some extent, Weiss somehow didn't find it in her to fume over the revelation over the past weekend.

Maybe it was because they had had to depend on each other to survive the Hammer of the Legion herself. Maybe it was because Noctis had proposed detaining the potential spy, now revealed to be a defector, for a fair and just trial. Maybe it was just because Blake didn't seem like the type to support what Silber Team for instance did on a regular basis.

She made a beeline towards her teammate, weaving through the throng of police officers, paramedics and firefighters that now crowded the scene of the robbery. There was a smear of blood on her cheek, while off to the side Carmine - with her helmet's visor raised and her sheathed sword resting on the ground point-down - was using a wad of gauze to sponge off copious amounts of bright red arterial blood from a now healed slash on her wrist. All that hinted to some sort of vile medical procedure that Weiss wanted to neither know nor ask about. Weiss walked towards Blake, the two of them squaring off.

"Weiss, I want you to know that I'm no longer associated with the White Fang," Blake began. "Back when I was with the-"

"Stop," she said curtly, cutting her teammate short. Ruby and Yang looked at her worriedly. "I've had two days and a fight for my life to think about this, and I've decided… that I don't care."

"You… you don't care?" Blake asked, her time both surprised and confused.

"You said you're not one of them anymore, right?" Weiss continued.

"No, I-I haven't been since I was younger-"

"Again,'I don't want to hear it," Weiss said, interrupting her teammate once more. "All I want to know is that the next time something this big comes up, you'll come to your teammates _before_ Lapis finds out first and tries to kill us all for some perceived betrayal."

"O-of course," Blake stammered, clearly tearing up.

"See? I told you it would work out in the end," Noctis quipped, prompting both Carmine and Blake to roll their eyes.

"You said nothing about that," Blake deadpanned. "You only tried to guilt-trip me into leaving."

"And it worked."

"It would have been better if you did that before you used a suicide bomber clone on me."

Weiss was thrown for a loop by that one. "What?" She burst out.

"Please, refrain from asking," Carmine said. "My idiot partner here failed to realise the definition of non-lethal tactics," she grumbled, before turning towards Noctis. The leader of team NICL had removed his mask and faceplate, presumably because Roman had already left, and was now sheepishly fiddling with the straps of his helmet. "May I repeat that a standard fragmentation grenade exploding point-blank to the face is in no way _non-lethal_?"

"What happened to him?" Yang blurted out, pointing to the… monkey Faunus from Friday being brought into an ambulance by stretcher. What the hell? "They've placed his neck in a brace."

"Aha!" Noctis laughed. "My _own_ partner, having neglected to bring any sort of tranquillisers whatsoever, decided that the best way to knock Blake's handsome friend over there out of the fight was to bash him with the pommel of her sword until he stopped moving."

Yang sighed. "The two of you clearly don't know anything resembling restraint."

"Said the pot to the kettle," Noctis snarked. "Anyway, all's well that ends well. Your team is back together after all. That's more than what I can say for mine."

"Yeah, he's right!" Ruby suddenly cheered, drawing her teammates in for an impromptu group hug. "Team RWBY is back together!"

They laughed about the whole situation for a while, the two members of team NICL trading jokes and anecdotes with the members of RWBY before Ruby asked "Hey, wait a minute, wh-"

She was interrupted by a truly massive explosion from the direction of the harbour. They all started. Noctis and Carmine drew their weapons, assuming combat stances for a while before Carmine started grumbling and slapped the back of her teammate's helmeted head.

"You absolute idiot!" She yelled in disbelieving anger. "How the hell did you forget about the scuttling charges?"

Wait. What scuttling charges? Now that she was paying attention, Weiss could see the silhouettes of two halves of a ship through the smoke sinking slowly into the waters of the harbour. Wasn't that a... SDC freighter? What the hell?

"In my defence, it was Adam's idea. You know, Adam Taurus?" Noctis tried to laugh it off, and failed.

If looks could kill, the one Weiss gave him would have caused Noctis to shrivel up and die right there on the spot. The shipwreck slowly sinking beneath the waves behind him, no doubt carrying a cargo worth _millions,_ only served to further drive home the point.

/-/

Lapis couldn't sleep. She had been stuck in a ward in the medical wing since whatever happened on Friday. She was technically here until Monday because of the concussion, but that wasn't the problem.

She heard the door open, and a set of booted feet walk in. From the way they paused at the doorway for a bit, she could tell that he or she was probably debating whether to switch on the lights or not. But she couldn't be sure. Not anymore.

"Hey, Lapis. It's Noctis here," a familiar voice said. "I don't know if you can hear me, but I'm here to tell you two things. One, the mission went well. We succeeded. Two, Blake… wasn't exactly a traitor."

He paused, presumably to wait for a response. When none came, he continued "She was a defector, you know. She wasn't a spy. To be honest, it's kind of our fault in a way. Icarus didn't tell us because he was worried that… well, he was worried that this might happen."

So he had bought the lie as well? Was it even a lie? She didn't know. She couldn't know.

"Look, you're getting discharged on Monday, right? Well, help me do one thing. Please."

"What?" She finally snapped.

"After two days, she speaks," Noctis chuckled. "Alright. Can you apologise to Blake and Yang for me? You might just as well apologise to the entire team, but the two of them in particular."

"Okay, fine," she mumbled. "Now get out. I want to sleep."

"Not one for conversation now, eh? Okay, fine. I'll leave you alone, but I expect you to be back to your usual self tomorrow. Anyway, good night."

He then walked out of the room before closing the door behind him. Lapis broke out into yet another fit of sobbing.

It wasn't that she was concussed; indeed, she was fine, but it was something else together.

Lazuli had stopped talking.

It had happened a few times before, but every single time she could sense that he was still there but holding his tongue. This time? It was if he had been disconnected, as if Yang's beatdown had knocked something in her head loose.

Losing Lazuli was probably the worst thing that could happen barring someone close to her dying. He was an engine of observation, inference and deduction that had saved lives, most notably those of herself and Solis, on numerous occasions. More importantly, he was her friend, as weird as it was to call a voice in her head a friend.

Most importantly, he had been an inbuilt lie detector. He would notify her as to whether someone was lying or not via various subconscious cues, and from there she could decide whether to trust the person or not.

Now, without him, she couldn't find it in her to trust anyone.

Maybe it was because she had been betrayed by the man she had looked up to more than anyone else.

Maybe it was because she had been embroiled in the game of dirty politics that was running a criminal paramilitary organisation in Vacuo for most of her adolescence.

But maybe it was just because without Lazuli, Lapis was reduced to that Valhallan girl who got a lucky shot on the Allfather all those years ago. And she feared that more than anything else.

It could be possible that she had gotten addicted to the power that becoming Auxilia gave her. Perhaps her face had grown to fit the mask of the Auxiliary. Without that, she was nobody. And that? That was her worst nightmare.

"Lazuli… please, say something…" Lapis sobbed into her pillow. "Please… anything…"

The sheer _silence_ seemed to crush everything else.

 **[VOL 1, ACT 1. FIN]**

" _All held the finite and infinite as unrelated. None could foresee that the history of the two would become one."_

 **(Alright then, here's to the end of Volume 1! By the way, three Volumes make one Act, in case you were wondering. Before things start off proper for the next Volume, there'll be two or three Interludes; one World of Remnant interlude and one or two normal Interludes where some rather important POVs will be explored.)**


	16. Interlude 1: Sparrowhawk

**(Ever heard of the Pfeifer Zeliska .600 Nitro Express revolver? You know, the giant revolver that costs about 17k USD, not including rounds that cost 40 USD a pop? Yeah, now you see it... in Taiyang's hands. Note that people use .600 Nitro Express to kill charging _elephants_ , so yeah.)**

Taiyang wouldn't have given the news a second glance if he hadn't seen that boy's picture. The newspaper was boring as usual, with a front page article about some robbery in Vale's docks that went spectacularly bad. They sank a freighter in the harbour... _of all things_. With its cargo, even.

He sipped his coffee again, before taking a bite out of his toast. Maybe he was hallucinating. Maybe he was fantasising after being alone for too long. His two daughters were both at Beacon after all.

Still, he wasn't mistaken. He remembered that boy with the greatcoat, but he was different back then.

Those weren't his memories, though. He remembered the graveyard. The Tomb of Oedon, it was called? His own axe and shotgun were different back then as well, not as technologically advanced and more makeshift. He remembered the boy with the greatcoat, but he was different. He used less lasers and more fire. Instead of a masked helmet, he wore a withered tricorne hat and a scarf. And he had killed him. He had killed the boy, and the boy had killed him.

"Too proud to show your true face, eh? But a sporting hunt it was," he muttered subconsciously. He put down the newspaper, before putting his head in his hands because of the growing migraine. Who was he?

Was he Gascoigne? He remembered the man who killed his own wife in a blood-drunk rampage, the man who became nothing but a beast wearing the skin of a human, and the man who had lost everything to who he was certain was the boy who even now was Ruby and Yang's classmate. But that wasn't him. Was it true, though?

Was he Taiyang Xiao Long? The man whose first wife ran away, and whose second wife went missing in action? The man who survived being experimented on by his own headmaster, who survived his semblance, his very soul, being twisted by some cosmic power? He used to have the same semblance as the one his daughter had now. When he got angry, the world used to burn with him. Now? Everything burned so bright that nothing was left. Who was he?

He suddenly noticed out of the corner of his eye that there was a ball of pure light floating above the dinner table. Taiyang sighed. There it was, his semblance acting up again. He extinguished it with some mental effort. He didn't want to end up damaging his own home, after all.

Instead of simply literally burning with anger, he could create a literal microcosm of the sun. A star, a floating gaseous body of thermonuclear reactions that he could manifest and manipulate at will. He could propel it in any direction along his line of sight, and he could control the size of the miniature sun. He could also recall it to himself at will, the star dematerialising from where it was to reappear at his shoulder.

Come to think of it, it didn't sound that bad. However, his little sun was still as hot as the actual sun. Its temperature was still thousands of degrees at the surface, hot enough to melt metal and vaporise concrete. The maximum size of the star was, if he were far away enough and still able to maintain visual contact, technically limitless. What did that mean?

That meant that he could technically vaporise entire cities, if not entire regions. It sounded more like a weapon of mass destruction than a mere semblance. That was a sobering thought, to recognise that he was in fact a walking WMD.

"Who am I?" He muttered angrily.

The siren - a long, low distant wail - interrupted him, warning of a B Class threat. Essentially, something serious enough for him to actually break out his real combat gear but not bad enough that he had to go all out. His scroll buzzed with a message containing the estimated time of arrival of the horde - twenty minutes at least - and a location. It appeared to be somewhere nearby, around the south end of Patch, near enough to populated areas that there was some kind of urgency in the matter. It would take at most ten minutes for him to get there with his car, meaning that he at least had time to prep first.

A short, low siren indicated a routine attack by Grimm that were usually no threat on their own, like Beowolves and Ursas. That was the alert for a C Class threat.

A low, long siren foretold of a horde larger than normal but not dangerously so, or the presence of especially dangerous Grimm like Goliaths or particularly large Nevermores. That was the alert for a B Class threat.

A long, low siren followed by a long high pitched one signified a horde so large that it could potentially endanger the island of Patch, or that the horde had enough individually dangerous Grimm that containing the incursion would require a joint operation with the military at least. At worst, swarms like that could potentially result in another Mountain Glenn. That was the alert for an A Class threat.

A long, high pitched siren warned everyone present, regardless of age or profession, to _run_. Run for their sanity and their lives. That siren only signified one thing, one absolutely nightmarish thing that hung in the future like the spectre of death itself; the Grimm Troupe. That was the alert for a S Class threat.

The threat ranking system had proved to be the single greatest thing to guarantee the safety of the average person since the advent of the Huntsman Academies. Now citizens were able to have some sort of an idea as to what sort of threat their kingdom's security forces were facing, and Huntsmen now had an idea as to what would be the most appropriate and effective response.

Taiyang got up from the dining table, folding the newspaper and pushing his chair before walking off hurriedly. He threw open the door of the house armoury - the attic - before rushing in to get his equipment. He passed by some mementoes that even now still stung. There were a number of prototypes for what was now Crescent Rose. There was a battered set of metal gauntlets that Yang used to use to train her form. There were numerous discarded weapons, some melted into slag and only fit for the metal they were made of, while others were only smashed into pieces that were still salvageable for spare parts.

He pulled out his combat gear from a cabinet, slipping on a dark brown Kevlar-ceramic composite armour cuirasse that was covered with satchels and bandoliers of ammunition over a khaki flight suit he had put on first. Greaves and bracers of the same composite armour completed the set.

He pulled on a set of combat boots, before strapping a relatively small piece of machinery - about as large as a small backpack - to his back via a harness. Finally, he pulled out what was actually a military flight helmet that he had modified for his own purposes. He connected the breathing tube of the helmet and a few other wires to the machinery on his back, before wincing as the helmet activated the implant at the base of his skull. Finally, he reached down to the apparatus strapped to his back and pulled out a thin, flexible tube tipped with a hypodermic needle. He stabbed the needle into the port of the implant, flinching slightly as the implant finally linked up with the needle to puncture the base of his skull.

Taiyang sighed in relief as the specially formulated cocktail of combat drugs flooded into his circulatory system from the machinery on his back through the tube. The apparatus on his back was part chemical injector and part air regulator; it prevented him from hyperventilating due to the effects of the drugs by regulating the levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide present in his air supply via the breathing tube, while it also regulated the proportions of combat drugs used to maximise effectiveness while minimising the chance that he could get addicted to the drugs.

Taiyang started to twitch every so often from the implant regulating the flow of chemicals coursing his system, but they weren't bad enough that he couldn't prep his weapons.

He pulled out his axe, turning it over in his grip to check for any imperfections on the oversized blade before twisting something that caused the currently collapsed haft to extend lengthwise. A long, thin spear point shot out of the top of the shaft where the axe blade was housed, turning the previously oversized one-handed axe into a rather proportional halberd.

He transformed the halberd back into its axe form before casually flicking a few switches. Flipping the weapon into the air mid-transformation, the thing that landed in his hand was a truly massive scoped revolver. Flipping out the cylinder to load the gun, he individually slid home five .600 Nitro Express rounds before closing it. Spinning the cylinder idly with his finger to ensure it wouldn't seize up and jam, he eventually decided that enough was enough and holstered the gargantuan handgun at his side.

Now fully outfitted, he left his house. Zwei wasn't a concern. The little corgi had found his way to Beacon via mail, of course necessitating Tai to make his journey that much easier by vouching for the pup. He couldn't take care of Zwei if he was staying in the temporary lodging - in a safe house that was basically just an apartment - that Ozpin had arranged for him, since Ozpin didn't want his presence in Vale to be immediately obvious to any malicious elements using the upcoming Vytal Festival for cover.

The receptionist manning the post office had looked at him funnily when he had delivered the tube with Zwei in it as a package. At least, the mangy teenager there for his summer break had done so until Tai had started to reach for his revolver. What? Combat drugs made him unstable sometimes.

He got into Yellowjacket; a Pursuit Special V8 Interceptor that was his pride and joy to drive. He revved the engine, feeling the supercharged V8 monster that took pride of place on his engine block roar into life. That engine was all but necessary now with all the modifications he had installed. A roll cage, bulletproof glass and a chassis reinforced with military-grade armour plating weren't exactly the lightest additions around, as was the massive nitro boost system that effectively took up his entire boot with two massive nitrous oxide tanks.

Taiyang flicked on the switch for the nitro boost system, feeling that he didn't have time to dilly dally today. The HUD of his modified flight helmet showed him exactly where and how to drive to arrive at his destination in the least amount of time, and the combat drugs in his system gave him the superhuman reflexes needed to carry said instructions out. It worked out that way even if said instructions led him to make a reasonably accurate impression of a drag racer, doubtlessly breaking at least thirty traffic laws as he flew past red lights at speeds that even actual Formula One race cars would be hard pressed to beat. Others watching would see just a black blur with a flash of yellow racing stripes.

"Tai, is this you?" He suddenly heard someone ask through the radio of his helmet. "It's me, Spearmint. You know, your colleague at Signal?"

"Hey, Spearmint. How's the situation there?"

"It's only me and a bunch of regular servicemen without aura over here. Your help would be rather appreciated, especially since the main bulk of the horde isn't here yet. I'm seeing a bunch of Deathstalkers around, so hurry up. I'll try to save some for you."

"What, you want me to try throwing them by the tail again?" Taiyang wondered aloud, spinning the steering wheel and just barely missing a white luxury sedan heading in the opposite direction.

"Motherfucker!" He yelled. The other driver stared at him dumbfounded, no doubt mesmerised by the extreme speed of the Pursuit Special that has very nearly totalled his car. Taiyang recognised him as Signal's principal, headed as far away from the swarm as possible and to the nearest Grimm shelter.

Unlike most Huntsman schools, which were generally founded and run entirely by Huntsmen or other such trained personnel, Signal's principal had managed to start the eponymous primary combat school with sheer finances. It was apparently supposed to be a philanthropic venture, but things turned sour when he had insisted that he be the head of said school.

At least, that was what he had heard from old-timers like Spearmint. That old geezer was one of the starting teachers who had taught students there since the school's formation, instructing mathematics and teaching music notes to decades' worth of children - himself included. Taiyang was the combat teacher, while Qrow taught Grimm Studies, so he and his teammate had had it easy. They taught the interesting subjects. Spearmint was basically Signal's version of Oobleck; both of them taught generally boring subjects and brought them to life. _That_ took willpower, much more than the quantities that even he had.

"What's your ETA?" Spearmint asked, the crunch of bone ringing out into Taiyang's ears. The latter inferred that his old music teacher's mace form of his lute had just been violently brought into a Grimm's skull. "I sure hope that it's within, say, the next thirty seconds."

"More like the next ten," Taiyang replied, the horde of Grimm now coming into view in his windscreen. "Still, I'm coming in at somewhere around two hundred and eighty kilometres an hour so try not to get hit."

"Oh yeah, now I see you. And your goddamn V8 Interceptor," the older man, at least more than twice as old at Taiyang himself, sighed. "What are you gonna do, use the Grimm as airbags like what you did last time?" Spearmint deadpanned.

"Hey, if it ain't broke then don't fix it," Taiyang quipped, the combat drugs replacing his normal relaxed state with the sense of reckless abandon that was the bane of so many other contestants in the Vytal Festival back in the day.

Still, it wasn't as bad or humiliating as Summer being able to solo three people at once all while blindfolded. His team leader was generally one of the nicest people he had ever met, but, despite the fact that Raven in particular was loath to admit it, she was the most powerful out of all of them. At least, that was true before the _experiment_.

Headmaster Ozpin and Atlas's general of the era - not Ironwood, but someone else whose name he had forgotten - had recruited him… no, they had forced him into that pod. He remembered them saying something about Maidens, about how they would transfer her power to him as she was unreliable and could not be trusted with said power. Well, they had _tried to_.

Tried to in the sense that they had failed utterly.

Instead of his soul and semblance changing in response to the attempted modification, they instead grew to equal them. That was the first time his sun really shined, in a manner of speaking. The former general had been caught in the star's expansion, which was kind of unfortunate even though the man had been royally dickish to him, and Ozpin had disappeared for a few days after the destruction of his office. He had returned after around a week, with a new face and a hundred different apologies on his lips.

After that, things had changed. They were still allowed to compete in Vytal Festivals, but this time they had two MVPs instead of Summer having to carry the whole team.

Raven would be the dust mage, wielding blades made of various types of dust in order to adapt to all combat situations.

Qrow would be the fast hit-and-run fighter, dashing into the fray with a sweep of his scythe or unleashing hypersonic hell from afar whenever he transformed his weapon's sword form into a railgun.

Summer would become a blur of ethereal light, with cutting arcs of energy and microcosms of the cosmos - for example, literal nebulas of exploding stars forming in her hands and meteors flying out of a portal over her eyes - coming to life to obliterate all who dared to stand against her in battle.

He would be the berserker, his axe and revolver alternating between forms in a drug-fuelled haze of bloodshed that very effectively distracted most people from the true threat; his miniature sun.

They were paraded as the champions of champions, the shining stars of Huntsmen who had succeeded for four years straight in making every other team of Huntsmen look like fumbling idiots. However, all that had soon fallen apart. He and Raven had tried to start a family, at least before she had run off and left him to care for Yang. Summer had offered some reprieve from that hurt, but then her death had damaged him in a way that even he couldn't describe. He had been left with two daughters, each one a reminder of someone he had lost.

He wouldn't lose them again. He had lost them once, in a city so far away and so long ago that it was almost like a dream now. But he remembered Yharnam. He remembered being Gascoigne. He remembered killing his own wife - Viola, it was Viola, how could he forget - and going mad himself. Two daughters had been left in the care of that _boy_ , the very one he had seen in the news... but different somehow.

" _Is he different, or is he just the same Hunter that left your daughters to die?"_ A voice within his mind asked. Taiyang shook it off.

He even knew how their stories ended. The younger one was consumed by a giant man eating boar when en route to the relative safety of the Cathedral Ward. The older sister had killed herself, leaping from the highest point she could find when she had found out about the deaths of her entire family barring herself.

" _And you're powerless to stop it from happening again,_ " the voice whispered again. _"So what if you're moving to Vale for the Vytal Festival because Willem told you to? You still won't be fast enough to intervene, neither will you be strong enough to save them."_

Taiyang growled, shifting slightly in the driver's seat to adjust the injector on his back. Most probably it had mixed up the proportions of the drugs and now he was hearing things in his mind as a side effect. Sure enough, the voice faded away into silence.

He brought himself back into the situation at hand. The horde of Grimm were closing in fast on a bunch of patrol cars parked out as cover for police officers with semi-automatic rifles. There were a flock of decently sized Nevermores in the air, explaining the alert for a B Class threat. Spearmint was there as well, strumming a tune Taiyang knew was meant as an offensive weapon. Sure enough, a group of Beowolves collapsed to the ground, clutching their ears desperately before their heads inevitably exploded.

"You're here!" Spearmint said, his voice jolly yet serious at the same time. "Now, it would be rather prudent if you were to slow…" He began, before Yellowjacket flew past him into the horde in front of him. The specially reinforced front of his Pursuit Special finally came into its own, Yellowjacket becoming a battering ram that reduced a good number of Grimm to slowly disintegrating paste before the combination of bodies piling up in front of it and Taiyang's own application of the brakes brought it to a stop.

"... down." Spearmint finally finished, his voice wincing as he did. "Still, at least that particular entry was more dynamic than usual."

He swung open the car door, immediately raising his revolver and firing it into the throat of a particularly curious Ursa. The big-game round basically ripped its neck into pieces, off of which its head dangled like a demented lantern. The beast crumpled to the ground, giving Taiyang enough space to bring his revolver to bear at the rest of the horde. Four more rounds were expended, killing about five more assorted Grimm before Taiyang transformed the now empty revolver into his axe.

"Beasts everywhere... I like the smell of this hunt already!" He laughed, leaping into the fray. Now the combat drugs came into their own. His reflexes, his speed and his strength were brought up to their absolute limits and then some. To be honest, it was rather like that rush of power he had felt when he had accepted communion from the Healing Church all those years ago. He felt invincible, just like he had felt when prowling the streets of Yharnam with Henryk.

His opening swing caught an Ursa on the head, splitting its skull open and killing it instantly. Taiyang kicked the already smoking corpse off of the blade, before transforming his axe into its halberd form and grasping the haft with both hands.

"Not exactly the blistering solo I would recommend, but your method certainly gets the job done," Spearmint japed.

Taiyang reared back before sweeping with his halberd, the axe blade cleaving through numerous Grimm like it was nothing. He used the momentum of his weapon to backflip, his agility and strength boosted by the combat drugs, and landed on his feet with a running start that he used to charge back into the fray with the spear point of his polearm. His running charge skewered an Ursa which had very conveniently reared up to maul him, but his halberd stopped that in its tracks.

"Spearmint, is the area in front of me clear of friendlies?" Taiyang asked, throwing the corpse of the Ursa off of his weapon.

"Yep. The only living things in front of you are Grimm. Fire away."

Taiyang took his left hand off of his halberd's haft before snapping his fingers. A miniature sun burst into life, micro solar flares bursting into life on its surface.

"Alright, here goes nothing," he joked. "Hopefully I don't accidentally vaporise the whole street like last time."

"I can tell you for sure that any collateral damage you cause is going out of your pay." Spearmint deadpanned. The balding man was now currently killing an Ursa with music, the specific notes he was now plucking with his lure having been refined to reduce Grimm to convulsing wrecks spasming so badly that their muscle spasms shattered their own bones.

This particular Ursa was further along the process, already twitching and bleeding black ichor out of every orifice. The music teacher transformed his lute back into a mace, before raising it and putting the poor Ursa out of its misery with a single loud crack as its skull caved in from the force of the blow.

"Showoff," Taiyang grunted. "You could have finished it off sooner."

"Just reliving the days of my youth," his colleague and close friend shot back. "Just so you remember, I'm more than twice your age."

"Alright, fine. Now you're making me feel old," Taiyang grumbled. The swirling microcosm of a celestial body above his hand stopped swirling and eventually stabilised. He propelled it forward and expanded it, the miniature sun flying into the horde while gradually growing until it was around five metres across when it made contact. It was so bright that even with the tinted visor, he couldn't see the effect his sun was having on the horde in front of him. Eventually, his sun - now ten metres in diameter - became large enough to feasibly envelop an entire house and still have room to spare, prompting Taiyang to call it back before it became too large to manage.

The now massive celestial body dissipated along with the light and heat it exuded, now revealing the absolute devastation it left in its wake. Most of the land-bound Grimm were vaporised along with the very ground they had been standing out, and a massive concave trench of carbonised soil had been dug out of the previously pristine lawn.

"Well, that takes care of things," Spearmint noted. "Now let's mop up the rest of them."

Taiyang smiled, collapsing his halberd. "Give then no quarter?"

"Leave some for me, Tai. I need to get my blood pumping once in a while, you know?"

"Alrighty!"

Taiyang roared with delight, waving his one-handed axe in the air as he charged into the fray like a berserker of yore. His axe seemed to dance in the air, every movement of its blade cleaving through flesh or splitting skulls, even while his free hand tore and crushed with its raw strength alone.

His colleague was also taking his fair share of targets, his music causing a particularly large Nevermore to fall out of the sky and crash before a swing of his mace finished it off.

Taiyang summoned his miniature sun, sending it upwards into the sky before expanding it in the middle of the flock of Nevermores. For a second there was another sun in the sky, a white hot ball of roaring nuclear fusion that was so bright that, even with his tinted visor and HUD, it burned his retinas. Rather, it would have if not for the combat drugs boosting his retinas' regeneration. When the sphere of light dissipated, most of the Nevermores were just gone and those which survived were so permanently blinded by the light that they just crashed into the ground.

"What? Mission control, are you sure?" He offhandedly heard Spearmint ask. "That _wasn't_ the main horde? Shit."

"What?" Taiyang blurted out. "That wasn't the vanguard?"

"Yeah. Surface radar just registered a hell of a lot of blips. Nevermores, big ones and many of them at that. Thankfully, we have support."

"What, the Atlas military? Aren't they over at Vale?"

"No. Cainhurst forces incoming, they say," Spearmint replied. "Can't really get a clear picture here since even the policeman in charge here doesn't know all the facts."

Flashes of red filled his periphery, and when Taiyang turned around the voice in his head started chattering again with a vengeance.

" _Ah, the forsaken ones make their move? Looks like this would be more fun than I thought."_

There were scarlet portals in the air, rips in the fabric of reality through which armoured vehicles rumbled into the world. Some were IFVs - infantry fighting vehicles - tracked tank-like things meant to bring in troops but still be able to fight with heavy weaponry, but at the cost of armour. They were equipped with, along with a 30mm auto-cannon in a horizontal configuration and a coaxial 7.62mm machine gun, an ATGM launcher tube on the top of the turret. It was honestly a pity that those ATGMs couldn't come into play because of their minimum lock-on range.

Taiyang found himself hoping that the marksmanship of those manning the guns of those tanks would be nothing short of impeccable. Friendly fire by auto-cannon was nothing new and certainly not unheard of, after all. The IFVs rumbled to a stop before two doors in the back opened, allowing a group of ten soldiers per vehicle to disembark.

These soldiers were very different from Atlesian Knights, that was for sure. From a stahlhelm-esque helmet and faceless skull-like mask that was most probably filled with sensors to the armoured casing of a body, one got the sense that those in Cainhurst who designed them had been mostly focused on the utilitarian side of things rather than how the public would view them. Even the assault rifles most of them had were brutalist pieces of engineering, being sleek and militaristic, and the soldiers were also perfect examples of that design style. The normal infantry robots could even be mistaken for human, if one wasn't aware of the fact that there was nothing but robotic optics behind the eyeholes of their masks.

The robotic soldiers steadily walked out, taking battle positions behind cover such as their own vehicles or behind the squad cars assembled at the road. There were other variants as well, heavily armoured humanoid tanks with generators and some other modules on their backs. They were holding what seemed to be giant energy cannons of some sort, connected by electrical cables to the large machine on their back that served as an electrical generator. Others had lighter armour than the normal line infantry, equipped with bullpup assault rifles with built-in grenade launchers, and either bullpup sniper rifles or MANPADs strapped to their backs.

However, the other armoured vehicles there were certainly not carrying troops. They was basically SAM trucks, along with the required accompanying radar vehicles and mobile command posts. They rumbled to a halt, before raising the four missile tubes containing long-range surface-to-air missiles on their backs to point diagonally up at the sky. Others, probably SPAAG vehicles, raised their dual twin-linked 30mm auto-cannons and eight anti-air missiles towards the skies above in preparation to provide short-range anti-air defence.

"Nice," he said to himself. "They brought surface-to-air missiles. Those will work a treat against a flock like this."

One of the soldiers - this one being one of the more lightly-armoured ones with the bullpup assault rifles, and with a MANPAD on its back - seemingly glared at him through a slit in its helmet, before a synthetic metallic voice instructed, "Vacate the premises. The area is unsafe."

"Wait, what?" He responded, only now paying attention to the radio chatter that peppered his comms. It seemed that every other local responder present was receiving the same treatment from the newcomers, much to their indignation and displeasure. Some were spluttering in disbelief, while others seemed downright offended.

"You're asking us to leave? Seriously?" He asked angrily.

"Affirmative. Please leave," the robot replied, casually loading what appeared to be a 40mm caseless grenade into the inbuilt grenade launcher of its rifle. A moment later, it raised its rifle and fired.

"You have got to be kidding me," Taiyang blustered, ignoring the grenade detonating in the midst of the horde and killing a few Grimm. "We're _Huntsmen_. This is our _job_."

"Processing with command… buffering... very well," the robot eventually said. "You are hereby authorised to work alongside Cainhurst forces, albeit temporarily until your case is reviewed."

"Excellent," he muttered moodily. The long-range surface-to-air missiles that Cainhurst had bought were now firing at a steady rate, missiles leaving their tubes and arcing into the sky in the distance before exploding with bursts of orange flame that were partially obscured by the clouds.

The IFVs were roaming around, their 30mm auto-cannons shredding hordes of Grimm like a scythe through wheat while their coaxial machine guns or escorts of soldiers finished off any that survived. The soldiers themselves were doing their fair share of work as well, their assault rifles letting loose bursts of automatic fire that dropped Beowolves and Ursas alike while the socket bayonets attached came into play in the sort of hand-to-hand melee that these sorts of Grimm usually went for. However, even with the underslung grenade launchers some of them - the ones with the yellow stripe on their left arms - had, they seemed to be having problems with the more heavily armoured Grimm like Deathstalkers.

The heavily armoured ones with what Taiyang realised were laser cannons seemed to be having a better time at it, but they seemed to have a rather slow firing rate especially when compared to normal guns. Sure, the bright red beams they fired had excellent firepower, but the rate of fire they were putting out was simply insufficient in this kind of psuedo-melee. Even worse... the lasers, while easily able to punch through the armour of Grimm such as Deathstalkers, and proving equally capable of piercing multiple less armoured Grimm with every shot, seemed to be prone to overheating with sustained fire. At least they seemed to have rectangular shimmering barriers of some sort - energy shields, perhaps - that blocked their front from getting swarmed by Grimm and peppered by shrapnel, but Taiyang managed to observe that friendly fire was still able to pass through from behind to hit the Grimm in front. Maybe the protection it afforded was one-directional, then?

A less unenlightened onlooker would also wonder why the ATGMs that the IFVs could potentially fire didn't come into play and to hell with the minimum lock-on range, but Taiyang knew that a stray missile could potentially annihilate both friend and foe without the terminal guidance needed for it to maneuver into a proper travel path.

One Grimm in particular managed to get its stinger into one of the IFVs, stabbing into the turret ring before tearing the turret of the unfortunate vehicle off. Rather amazingly, the main cannon of the vehicle managed to shatter the armour on top of the thing's carapace with a final parting burst before the turret was uprooted entirely, which raised the question of whether there was any crew operating the vehicle at all. The two pieces of the vehicle clattered inertly before self-inflating balloons shot out of their forms and into the air, before inflating and lifting the two pieces into a scarlet portal waiting safely above the fray.

"Fulton extraction?" Taiyang noted. "That's pretty convenient."

"One of the many innovations our glorious empire brings to the table," the robot replied, its synthetic voice positively reverberating with what sounded like smugness. A Beowolf lunged for the robot's head, but a burst of accurate fire from the bullpup assault rifle in the latter's hands quickly put it down. "It makes recovery almost effortless, and damaged units such as that one are transported straight to the repair bays by the rift."

"How about that Deathstalker?" Taiyang asked pointedly. "You got an innovation for that?"

"The giant scorpion? We definitely have one for that," the robot said, pulling out what appeared to be an oversized laser pointer before painting the Deathstalker with a very bright and very visible green laser.

"Wait, isn't that a laser pointer? What's that going to do?" Taiyang asked, but the robot did not respond. Three short beeps reached his ears before a long beep on which one of the IFVs fired an ATGM, which shot out of the vehicle's cannon and into the air before arcing downwards onto the top of the Deathstalker's carapace. All that Taiyang saw when the smoke dissipated was a mangled, lifeless corpse with blank red eyes that was already disintegrating into black smoke.

"This, in case you did not recognise it, is a laser designator. Watch and learn, Huntsman," the robot said almost smugly.

Taiyang swore through gritted teeth, mentally slapping himself for not realising it sooner, before snapping his fingers and summoning his sun. He had grown soft from domestic life and raising a family, it seemed. He sent it to hover above a bunch of Grimm that had regrouped around a Boarbatusk around the size of a van before growing it to fifteen metres in diameter and slamming it into the ground. When he eventually dismissed his semblance, all that was left was a concave crater of obsidian glass where his sun had been.

"Hah!" He exclaimed. "Beat that, tin can!"

"Are we seriously playing one-upmanship now?" The robot said, its synthetic voice conveying a hint of the exasperation that would have had a normal person sigh and facepalm. "It must be admitted though that a localised and controllable fusion reaction is impressive at the very least."

Their game continued along that vein for a while, eventually culminating in two SPAA vehicles being commanded to kill a particularly large Deathstalker. Taiyang had admitted defeat after that, especially after the dust cleared and there turned out to be nothing left but chunks of shattered bone armour. Being practically hosed down by 30mm auto-cannons tended to do that to any sort of target, Taiyang noted grouchily.

"They've got you beat, Tai," Spearmint laughed. "Admit it, you can't match them without burning up the entire place."

"Fine, goddamnit," he grumbled. "The Grimm are all but gone now, I think."

"You're correct," Spearmint said. "There are no more radar blips, which leads us to assume that the SAMs did their job. No more land-bound Grimm as well thanks to reinforcements."

Taiyang got back into Yellowjacket. "Do I have to stay for the debriefing?"

"No, but why? Are you leaving now?"

"Yeah. I've got a ferry to catch," he said, switching off the injector and removing the tube from his implant. Yellowjacket kicked into gear again, slowly moving back onto the road.

"Going to Vale, huh? Well, if I were you I'd go as well. Your daughters are sure to end up participating in the Vytal Festival this year, and it would really be a waste to miss out on even one of their matches."

Taiyang reached the road. He began to drive off, heading straight for the ferry terminal. "My unpaid leave has been approved, right?"

"Your leave? Oh, right! You're going to be gone until next year, according to the system."

"That's correct. May as well take a gap year in my career. Shouldn't do me any harm, after all."

"Well, wish your daughters good luck from their old teacher, alright? I wonder if Miss Xiao Long is still as tone-deaf as I remember."

"Yep. She still listens mainly to death metal. The number of times I've told her that she'll burst her eardrums with the volume she plays it at…"

"We all appreciate music differently. Anyway, Bon voyage, Taiyang. Enjoy yourself," Spearmint finished, before the comms channel shut off.

Taiyang drove to the ferry terminal in what would have been silence if not for the fact that he eventually got bored, set his car on autopilot and started to gaze around. He found it calming, after all, and it helped to tide him over the inevitable withdrawal when the drugs stopped being administered by his injector.

There was a small bird flying overhead, one that looked like a falcon. Falcons were pretty neat birds in his opinion; Horus, an old sky god and the patron god of the monarchy, had a falcon's head. At least _some_ of what Oobleck had told him during his time at Beacon had stuck over the years.

If he couldn't find redemption, Taiyang felt, he had come pretty damn close to achieving it. He had raised two daughters he loved more than anything else, and he felt no small sense of pride at the fact that they were both going to Beacon. He pushed up his now unnecessary visor, switching off his HUD in the same motion. Who knows? Maybe they'd follow in his footsteps and sign up for the Vytal Festival. Then he'd be there to cheer them on, as he should have all this while.

Admittedly, he _had_ shut down after Summer's death. Having his first wife abandon him and his second wife go missing in action broke him, albeit temporarily. Temporarily because his life as Father Gascoigne had given him iron in his veins that even grief and loss would be hard pressed to subdue.

Life for them, and in extension for him, held so much possibility. He had failed as a father once, losing himself to the hunt. Never again.

Despite himself, he started to chuckle. They would certainly be shocked at his new attitude, that was for sure.

/-/

Snowbird sighed. It wasn't that he didn't like flying, in fact he loved it. His red-nosed Adler was his pride and glory, and every second he spent in the air was a second well spent to him. No, what he didn't like was that they were sent on why was essentially a time-waster mission. Search-and-destroy missions - essentially going out to bomb Grimm in the wild to cull their population - were the worst. He had no idea whether the copious amount of ordnance they used on the wild population had any effect on them at all. Worst of all, there was no sense of _risk_ , no element of danger that any ace pilot craved. Both of them were aces, after all. Theoretically. His kills were all simulated, but in his defence they were every bit as hard to get as real kills.

His flight lead was Rot 3, Pelican. Hewas the stand-up comedian to his wingman's often futile attempts to maintain a venner of professionalism, often cracking jokes or making fun of the situation at hand. At least his callsign made sense, since pelicans had big mouths. He also disliked the kind of fratricidal conflict that would occasionally break out, but that didn't stop him in the least from reducing Grimm to smoking corpses and enjoying it.

Then there was him, Rot 4, call sign Snowbird. He was the youngest of his squadron, in fact since he was all of sixteen years of age he was still underage by most standards. However, some string-pulling and the recommendation of a sister who was an Atlesian Specialist managed to get him early into an Air Force academy. They took notice of his above-average skull and eventually honed it until he was exceptional enough to even stand a chance of making it into Atlas's legendary 2nd Air Division 52nd Tactical fighter Squadron 'Rot', infamous for having a grand total of a maximum of four members at any one time. Of course, he took that chance with both hands and the rest, as they say, was history.

Right now they were flying over the outskirts of Vale's territory in Sanus, looking for a suitable cluster of Grimm to strike. However, the problem with their Adler fighters was that they were not exactly the best for ground pounding since they could not carry any specialised air-to-ground ordnance. It was just their multirole fighters, their cannons, standard missiles and a set of air-to-ground missiles that could engage up to eight targets at a time. Okay, things probably weren't as bad as they could be, but they were still bad. It was unfortunate that a squadron of bombers couldn't have been sent to level the whole place, but command apparently couldn't spare a bomber squadron and apparently wanted to minimise damage to a place of 'natural beauty', hence them having no other choice but to just go for precision strikes by air-to-ground targets primarily meant for use against armoured targets like tanks.

"It's a damn shame we have to put missiles to the forest to get at the Grimm inside. I'm sure that it would have been a nice place to hike," Pelican said.

"Orders are orders, Rot 1, and it's our duty to follow them to a tee," Snowbird replied. "Let's just focus on getting the job done."

"I get it, kid. After all, this is actually a pretty safe mission for a hatchling like you to get his feet wet."

"Me? A hatchling?" Snowbird wondered aloud.

"Yes, you," Pelican chuckled. "Your call sign is Snowbird, after all, and since you're pretty much a kid Eagle Eye and I thought that it would be funny to give you a nickname to reflect that."

"This is my third mission with you, and I've logged quite a lot of flight hours besides. I'm hardly inexperienced."

"I know. I've read your dossier. You graduated top of your cohort in the Air Force flight academy, yadda yadda," Pelican said dismissively. "I'm just making sure that you don't get shot down the second things actually get serious. Besides, simulated combat is very rarely analogous to the real thing. Trust me. Besides, you'll learn soon enough that being a Rot pilot is… unique, to say the least. Our mechanic for one is a complete psycho, so don't damage the plane you're flying lest he tries to beat you to death with a wrench."

Eagle Eye - Rot Team's long-suffering AWACS - sighed in exasperation. "You came back with your plane trailing smoke that one time. The intakes were shredded thanks to your bright idea to fly through an Ariadne barrage to get at the Grimm below, and you ate bone shrapnel in the air intakes due to that. No wonder he nearly had an aneurysm the second he saw the condition your Adler was in, as well as the fact that you expected him to _repair_ all that damage."

"Fine. What I meant to say was that anything you learned in training that wasn't related to flying or carrying out missions is now useless," Pelican summarised. "They don't apply to our situation. Remember, you've got one hell of a pair of shoes to fill. kid. Songbird managed to get himself promoted to Captain of Reich Four for a reason, after all."

Combing the forest soon proved productive. "I see movement," Snowbird declared. "Looks like a group of around twenty Grimm, all at least two to three storeys tall judging from what my radar is telling me."

"That's a herd of Goliaths. Marking them out on radar now," Eagle Eye said. "They don't pose any threat to us since we're in the air, but it's probably best to take them out before they become a problem for those on the ground."

"Roger. Permission to fire?" Snowbird asked. They had dropped out of supersonic speeds, and even now their Adlers' legendary nimbleness was coming into its own.

"Go ahead. Use your 8AGMs. Just get us a pass done right and we'll finish this herd in time for lunch."

"Wilco. Launching missiles now," Snowbird responded, flipping a switch on his control stick to switch from normal missiles to his 8AGMs before taking aim onto one of the Goliaths in the middle of the herd. Then, making sure that each of his eight targets were painted by his target designator, he pressed the red button.

Eight missiles arced out from under his wings, flying somewhat forward before plunging downwards into their targets. Each of the missiles were confirmed kills; direct hits to the head by anti-armour warheads didn't exactly have the best prognosis. Rot 3 made his own pass soon after, wiping out the rest of the herd.

"Right on target! Looks like our job is done here!" Pelican said, checking the still smoking holes that they had carved into the trees for any further sign of life. "At least we've done something worthwhile, at least. Goliaths would have been hell for ground forces to kill, but it looks like we've done their job for them."

"Hey, that's what we do," Eagle Eye replied happily. "At least it's only Grimm we're blowing up today."

"Talking about Grimm, were Nevermores reported to be in the area of operations?" Snowbird asked, peering at his radar concernedly. There were more blips than usual, even if he considered interference from the trees due to how low he was flying. "I'm seeing quite a few blips on my radar. My IFF isn't getting anything, though."

"Yeah, they're Nevermores. Looks like we're having some much needed air to air action today, even if we're just dogfighting giant birds," Pelican said happily, his Adler banking up into the clouds to get a height advantage and thus an energy advantage. "Don't worry, kid, you won't be a nugget for long. Just stick with me and Eagle Eye here and you'll make it."

Snowbird switched his weapons systems to use his standard missiles instead of his 8AGMs, which was meant for surface attack and thus being all but useless in a dogfight, before following his flight lead. One of the blips on his radar, one that that had been marked as an enemy by Eagle Eye and recognised on everyone's radar by the data link the three of them had with each other, disappeared.

"It's confirmed. Marking them on radar now," Eagle Eye declared. "There are quite a few of them, but they aren't that big. At most, they're slightly larger than an Adler."

"So it's a turkey shoot. Easy peasy," Pelican chuckled.

"Pretty much. Still, be careful. One lucky feather shot into your cockpit and you're dead. Just ask that cocky bastard Hamilton and the bravado that did him in, if you can even scrape him off the mountain he crashed on," Eagle Eye warned. "Now let's not sit around and let your flight lead have all the fun, alright? Too bad I can't join in, but this AWACS plane is no fighter."

Snowbird drew up alongside Pelican above the clouds. "Too bad Rot 1 and Rot 2 couldn't join us," Pelican said wistfully."

"You know their duties, Pelican. Sparrowhawk and Osprey were assigned to escort Miss Schnee as a diplomatic envoy to Cainhurst."

"I know, but it's still a damn shame that they couldn't join us for _this!_ "

Jarred by the shouting, Snowbird turned to look at his flight lead who gave him a thumbs up before his plane inverted itself and dived back down.

"What a showoff. Still, at least he has something to show off," he grumbled before diving after his increasingly frustrating flight lead.

His HUD locked on to a Nevermore just in front of him and when the steady beep of a missile lock reached his ears, he fired.

"Fox Two!" He yelled triumphantly. A single missile flew off from his Adler's outer left underwing pylon before smacking into the Nevermore's back and exploding, shredding it into pieces that slowly fell back to earth. Another missile flew off to hit another Nevermore, blowing it into black mist. A third one received a cannon burst to the head, 30mm shells flying out from the muzzle off to the left of the nose to pulverise everything from the neck up and leaving the headless body to plummet to the ground.

He smiled. Fighting on the ground as Huntsmen and Huntresses did was barbaric, at least to him. While the trusted the Atlesian military to be able to do the jobs of Huntsmen but better, he still believed that some sort of combat aptitude was required in case conflict reached his doorstep. Since he had absolutely no athletic capability whatsoever, what better option was there than to learn how to pilot a machine that did all the hard work for him?

"Three targets down already, Snowbird?" Pelican asked rhetorically. "I have a feeling you'll fit in just fine with the rest of us old folks."

"Hey, who are you calling old?" Eagle Eye cut in. "I'm not even thirty yet!"

"Fine. _Older_ folks. Happy now?"

"Slightly better," the squadron's AWACS relented. "Just focus on the mission."

"Still, today was a good start for our new recruit at least. It's one hell of a sight better than my own reception."

"You can't compare the two, Rot 3," Long Caster said. "You got ambushed by White Fang fighters on your first flight while you were stuck in some rusty training Turmfalke, and you still managed to send them off with their tails between their legs. Snowbird here has been training for more than a year, and he's a fully qualified Adler pilot."

Yet more blips dropped off of his radar. Rot 4 pulled up from his dive, the excellent maneuverability of the Adler's airframe coming into its own as he looped around to get back into the fray. To be honest, combining the manoeuvrability lent by canards with the streamlined speed afforded by a delta-wing design was a bit broken but he wasn't complaining. He dodged sprays of razor sharp black feathers as the Nevermores started trying to fight back, planting missiles and cannon bursts where they would have the most destructive effect and generally trying his best to tear apart the flock of Grimm in front of him.

"Nice one, Snowbird! Five bandits splashed!" Pelican exclaimed, two of his own missiles zipping off from his fighter to smack down two Nevermores of his own. "Eagle Eye, I think I'm starting to understand the new guy's style."

"By that, do you mean that he's a hotshot?" Eagle Eye asked, the distinctive crunching of the man dipping into a bag of potato chips in the background of his comms.

"Aren't we all? We're Rot Squadron, after all, the biggest bunch of hotshots in the Atlas Air Force."

Snowbird pitched his plane up in a half loop before doing a half roll in something halfway between an Immelmann turn and a Pugachev's Cobra to regain an attack vector while his missiles reloaded. Fighting in the air had a grace to it that fighting on the ground could never have, he felt. When Huntsmen fought each other, it all came down to who had the better aura, the better semblance, the better weapon or the better tactics and techniques. Sometimes their victories came down to nothing short of pure luck.

In the skies? You were more on less on equal ground, flying fighter aircraft comparable to or even the same kinds as the ones used by your opponent. You used the same weapons, the same tactics and the same skills in a dogfight. Luck wasn't a factor when there was only you, your opponent and the vast blue skies. All that separated the victor from the loser was skill. When to deploy your flares to shake off a missile, when to pull off 9-G turns and physics-defying Post Stall Manoeuvres - PSMs in short - to get on your opponent's tail, when to finally take the shot to end the confrontation once and for all, all that took the kind of timing and precision that swinging a sword or axe could never have.

"Fox Two," Snowbird said monotonously, two of his missiles racing out to shoot down two separate targets. Both hit their mark, and their killer pulled up back into the clouds where their compatriots could not retaliate.

There weren't many targets left on his radar, Snowbird realised. The combined efforts of the two of them had basically decimated the flock of Nevermores in the span of only slightly more than a minute.

"You think they'll label this as a successful mission?" Snowbird asked. "I mean, we're really pulling our weight here."

Rot 3 burst out laughing. "They have such high expectations for us that I think they'll only admit a job well done if we kill the Wyrm himself."

"Now, don't jinx us," Eagle Eye warned. "You know that the overgrown lizard could be anywhere since he didn't show up for the most recent attack. I don't want it to pop up on my radar now of all places."

"Alright, fine. To speed up things a bit, why don't we play a game?" Pelican suggested. "The one with the lowest kill count has to pay for dinner tonight, and the one with the highest kill count gets to choose where to eat."

"That's a bit unfair to the rookie, but..." Eagle Eye protested weakly. Still, the AWACS sounded very tempted to just leave Snowbird out to dry. "He probably doesn't mind. Besides, there's this pasta place near the airport in Vale that I've always wanted to try. Their risotto is one of the best dishes Vale has to offer, at least according to the culinary guide I got."

Snowbird locked on to another target and fired. He repeated the process for his other missile, before cutting down two more Nevermores with his cannon. Still, his killcount continued to be the lowest in the squadron according to the data link on his HUD.

His situation was punctuated by the last few blips on his radar blinking out into nothing. The culprit, his whooping flight lead, flew past overhead with full afterburners.

"From my calculations, I have deduced that Snowbird will be paying for dinner," he cheered. "Eagle Eye, what were you saying about that Italian place?"

"I'm looking forward to that seafood risotto. But seriously, Snowbird, you sure you can pay for that?"

"It's… fine. Any expenses I incur will be paid for by my father."

"Wow. That's nice of him," Eagle Eye remarked. "Given that you're all the way in Vale, he must trust you a lot."

Snowbird paused. In actuality, his father didn't even know that he was in the Air Force, much less in Rot Team. For better or worse, the stress of running the largest dust company in Remnant and having the White Fang declare a crusade against his friends and family had distracted him from everything else, including his duties as a father. He sighed audibly.

"Sore subject? Sorry if I hit a nerve," the AWACS officer said.

"No, it's fine. Yes, he trusts me. Still, he's rather busy which means that the only way he can support me now is through financial support."

"What does he do?" Pelican asked. "Don't mind me asking, alright? I'm just trying to get to know the newest member of my squadron."

"It's alright, sir. Well, he runs the family business. It's a dust wholesale company, where we buy dust from affiliated mines to sell to retail shops."

"That's nice. Still, aren't dust wholesalers in general having a hard time with the SDC muscling in and all that?"

Snowbird hesitated. He didn't like the idea of lying to anyone, much less his flight lead - who was technically his commanding officer - but if he told them the truth, how would they react? It was most likely, he guessed, that they would either react badly or try to gain some sort of personal advantage. He expected either outright hostility or obnoxious flattery. So he decided to lie.

"We found a niche market, so to speak. Since the SDC takes most of the dust, we basically get the leftover dust and refine it further than normal. That way, we beat them in quality since we simply cannot beat them in quantity."

"Hmmm… that's actually a really good idea," Eagle Eye mused. "There's a market for hyper-refined dust out there, say, for scientific purposes. SDC dust is weapons-grade, which means that it's often loaded with additional chemical components to make it more effective, but the chemical additives mean that it isn't pure enough for scientific use."

"Since when were you such a science nerd, Eagle Eye?" Pelican asked.

"My dad used to be in Atlas's space program from way back when we didn't know that dust doesn't work off-planet," Eagle Eye explained. "I had always wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid, but I guess some dreams were never meant to be."

"Damn, that's one hell of a dream," Pelican said. "You know what I wanted to be when I was a kid?"

"A stand-up comedian?" Snowbird asked. "You certainly seem the type."

"Joining in the banter already, kid? No, it's fine. I actually wanted to be an aerospace engineer when I was your age, you know, developing the very same airframes that we're using even now," Rot 3 explained. "However, I couldn't qualify for the engineering course for university. That was why I joined the military, before getting drafted into the Air Force."

They came up to the aerial battleship. This one was over Vale itself, which meant that they only had to wait for one of the passenger ferries assigned to their ship to be able to go down to the city proper.

"Snowbird, you're landing first," Pelican said. "Make it quick though, we wouldn't want to miss our ferry."

Rot 4 slowed down his Adler gradually before coming in for the final approach. He lowered his landing gear and arresting hook before landing, his tail hook catching one of the arresting wires on the battleship's flight deck. Eventually, his plane came to a stop.

"That's a textbook landing, Rot 4. Looks like you didn't waste your time in flight school," the control tower commented. He ignored the compliment.

Snowbird raised his helmet's visor, finally exposing his bare eyes to the sunlight. Light blue eyes squinted due to the sudden brightness before quickly adjusting to the glare from the unobstructed sun above.

He pulled off his helmet. It was like any other helmet except for the fact that there was a stylised blue snowflake printed on it. His sister had insisted on it, citing the fact that it might actually be the only way of identifying him in the event that he was shot down and failed to eject. That possibility still seemed far away, at least... he thought so.

He turned back to his plane, watching as it was wheeled away to below the flight deck for storage. It was painted in a darker variant of the standard air superiority grey that coated Atlas's Adlers, but the tip of the nose was painted red. On the side of the fuselage just behind the cockpit was the Rot emblem, that of a red sparrow-hawk perched on a coat of arms and a banner around the circular emblem declaring them to be the 52nd Tactical Fighter Squadron 'Rot'.

It was a rather simple name, that of Rot. It literally meant 'Red' in the Atlesian language. Nothing too pretentious, but not too modest as well.

He hoped his father would be proud of him, but he didn't expect it. He had been livid when his oldest sister had signed up to become an Atlesian Specialist, and had reacted nearly as badly when his other sister had left for Beacon Academy. Snowbird had become his name, something that identified him as a person just as much as his given birth name did.

"Control, this is Rot 3. I'm coming in to land," he heard Pelican declare. "I have a free dinner to claim, so let's make this quick."

He smiled, despite himself. All of three missions with Rot Squadron had been more enjoyable than his entire childhood and, despite the fact that he was probably going to have to shell out maybe a hundred lien today, he was genuinely happy for once.

Would it be too much to hope that this happiness would last?

 **(Author's notes: Just to confirm, Snowbird _is_ actually someone we've seen in canon, but only from Volume 4 onwards. That should really be a big enough hint. Anyway, this will be the first of three Interludes, one more in a normal format and one World of Remnant style one.)**


	17. Interlude 2: Court of Fools

Solis relaxed in his seat. He had reluctantly refused to travel with Neptune and Scarlet, and there was no question that he was not even going to consider stowing away on a ship like Sun. He felt that this arrangement wasn't that pretentious, despite the fact that he was currently sitting in an airliner. It wasn't much; there were two newspapers, one dated back to a few days ago and one for yesterday, showcasing Vale's 'hottest' news and there was a little touchscreen showing one of his favourite movies. The movie was about a giant shark, as far as he could tell, and he found it rather therapeutic. Especially when he had to deal with whatever was in those newspapers.

The later newspaper was mainly for him to decipher how his teammate managed to get himself concussed into unconsciousness and end up with a broken skull. The earlier newspaper was to determine how exactly his partner - a friend with considerable benefits - had ended up trashing one of Vale's main thoroughfares in a street brawl with three members of another team.

He looked back to the screen and realised that he had nearly missed the iconic line of 'You're gonna need a bigger boat.' Regardless, the movie still brought a smile to his lips. He wished things were that simple; kill the giant shark and win. However, what to do if the giant shark was your friend? He knew Lapis was prone to getting into fights and causing property damage, but this was a bit much in his opinion. There was no record of actual conflict in the area, indicating that this was most probably a personal conflict grown large and superimposed onto the surrounding area.

Solis huffed in exasperation before putting down the newspapers. He may as well enjoy his giant shark movie, after all. He had never been to Vale before, and definitely not with three other guys that he hadn't even known before the start of term.

He had left his Praetorian outfit back in Vacuo, but some elements of it were still carried over. There was a khaki trenchcoat over a bulletproof vest and a bandolier of ammunition, underneath that a green suit with a red tie to add a splash of colour, as well as a pair of military-issue combat boots. Lastly, there was a black beret with the Legion logo and a pair of aviator sunglasses, giving him the ability to conceal his features somewhat. He still went by his real name; why shouldn't he if no one else apart from Lapis and maybe the Meadows brothers would be able to connect his name to the Legion?

He hoped that his two identities would never be connected. He didn't want to put the people he had grown to consider as friends at risk, even though he could be a douche at times. One particular example was this little escapade of his. Neptune and Scarlet were now on school-provided transport, and Sun was currently in Vale's General Hospital recovering from a cracked skull. He had decided to take the slightly more luxurious route. Why shouldn't he? He could afford it, after all.

"Hello?" A feminine voice over his shoulder asked. "Would you like some champagne?"

"Yes, thank you so much," he replied to the stewardess, delicately plucking off a champagne flute from a metal tray she was holding with one hand. "By the way, how much longer will it be until we reach Vale?"

"Oh, that?" The stewardess replied, pulling out a scroll with her free hand. "It appears that the flight will be for another one and a half hours at least."

"One and a half hours? Oh, okay."

"Would you like any refreshments?" The stewardess asked.

"A cold sandwich would be nice, thank you very much."

"I'll go and get it for you soon," she replied, before leaving to serve the other passengers in the first-class cabin.

He could definitely afford this. A first-class ticket wasn't _that_ extravagant, after all. Being the boss had its perks sometimes, even if the job was rather stressful. Solis settled back down to sip his champagne, the delightfully fizzing vintage taking the edge off of his stress. It was a nice setup; watching one of his favourite movies ever while sipping champagne and waiting for a cold sandwich.

He was interrupted by the shriek of jet engines coming from outside the airliner, and when he looked out the window he saw two sets of contrails lingering in the air. He looked around frantically for the fighters responsible, and when he saw their liveries he couldn't help but break out into swearing. Two Phantoms, both decorated with the signature paint job of Silber Squadron. Solis gulped down the rest of his champagne and paused the movie before rising out of his seat.

"Sir, would you please sit down?" One of the stewardesses asked.

"I need to speak to the captain of this airliner. There are hostile fighters in our airspace, probably to intercept us."

"They're Atlesian fighters. They won't harm us," she protested.

"Did you not see their liveries? They're Phantoms from Silber Squadron," he replied. The stewardess showed no sign of recognition, instead staring patronisingly at him. Solis's face turned red.

"Dear passengers, it appears that we have encountered some unforeseen difficulties. Please return to your seats when the seatbelt sign has been switched on. Cabin crew, please prepare the cabin for... vigorous turbulence," the airship's intercom said. Solis watched as the stewardess's eyes widened at the implications of the instructions.

"Vigorous turbulence?" Solis asked smugly. "What a complicated way to say 'evasive action'."

The stewardess didn't reply, instead just waving him off in the direction of the cockpit.

Solis burst into a scene of chaos. He saw the pilot desperately trying to find a suitable escape vector while the copilot was trying to negotiate with the fighter pilots. It was mostly unintelligible, but Solis picked up the gist that they had apparently intruded into White Fang airspace. The problem was that airliners as large as the one he was on usually had preprogrammed flight paths that could not be easily changed, but that was exactly what the fighter pilots wanted. He walked up to the captain.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" He asked. "The cabin crew sent me up here since I'm the only one resembling a Huntsman on board."

"How the hell did they even approve you being here?" The captain asked angrily. "Besides, even if you're a Huntsman, what can you do against two fighters?"

"Me? Well, I can do quite a bit," he smirked, pulling out his scroll and dialing the hotline of one of Vale's Centurions. "Winchester? Hey, old man, would you be kind enough to send up a fighter escort? Four Turmfalkes should be enough, especially since the White Fang fools we pissed off only have two Phantoms."

The captain stared at Solis as he continued. "No, there's no need to send the Adlers. We wouldn't want to waste them, after all. Tell you what, how about I meet you in Vale after I land and settle down in Beacon? Maybe you could tell me about your family and that son you've got? Well, see you later, old man," Solis said. With that, he ended the call and put his scroll back into his pocket.

"What did you do?" The captain asked accusingly.

"Oh, nothing. I only saved our collective arses by requesting for escort," Solis drawled.

"What are you, Legion? How the hell did you get escorts in the air?" The captain shot back.

"What if I am?" He replied. "You got a problem with that?"

"Like hell I do. I'm a Faunus, you racist prick." The captain growled, and only now Solis realised that the man he was talking to had two dog ears on the top of his head that even now were pulled back in agitation.

"Look, are we gonna get hung up over that? Or are you going to let me do my job?" Solis asked, leaning in towards the captain. "For the record, the Legion doesn't hate all Faunus. We only oppose the White Fang and their terrorist actions."

"Don't think you can lie to me, punk," the pilot seethed. "I know why the Legion was formed, bastard. The _authorities_ didn't like the idea of Faunus standing up for themselves with the White Fang, and so they created the Legion to oppose it at every turn. Am I correct?"

Solis paused. To be honest, the truth wasn't that far from that. Even he didn't know who the shadowy mastermind at the head of the whole thing was, but even so the man was always able to deliver on whatever Solis had bargained for. From military equipment to armoured vehicles and even fighter jets, they had all been delivered with their tracks so covered that even the best law enforcement Remnant had to offer couldn't trace them. All he knew was that the man really liked talking about fairy tales and had _serious_ connections in Atlas's military.

"What's wrong? Cat got your tongue?" The pilot prodded mockingly. "Did what I say hit a nerve, little man?"

Solis huffed in annoyance, internally dismissing the pilot's argument. "You do your job and I'll do mine."

"Fine. Let's just focus on surviving for now," the pilot conceded. "So what are you gonna do about the fighters? Air support might not get here in time before their trigger fingers start getting itchy."

"I have a solution for that," Solis said, reaching out with his semblance with one arm outstretched. He knew a million and one ways to completely trash aircraft with his semblance, and now was the time to bring each and every one of them into play.

The copilot leapt out of his seat in surprise as metal blades, too many to count, erupted from the surface of the enemy aircraft. They specifically targeted the control surfaces, growing to essentially ruin the aerofoil structures of the wings and the aerodynamics of the fighter. Soon, the Phantom was just a hunk of interlocking metal blades that was hurtling towards the ground.

Solis heard the pilot within unleash a steady stream of curses that was heard by the copilot's radio, before even that turned into incoherent terrified screaming when the ejection seat deployed only to be caught by the blades. The canopy didn't even have space to pop off, essentially turning the fighter into a metal coffin hurtling towards the ground at supersonic speeds.

The other fighter peeled off to follow his doomed compatriot, his frantic explanation that they were actually there for a training mission mixing in with the screams from the doomed pilot. The latter eventually cut off suddenly, the wreck of a plane presumably having made contact with the ground below. Just as that happened, Solis's scroll rang again.

"Winchester?" He asked. "Fighters are en route now? That's the best news I've heard in a long time. See you in Vale, you damned old codger. I hope your son is every bit as charming as you are."

"What's the ETA?" The copilot asked him after he had stashed away his scroll. "I certainly hope it's soon enough before reinforcements arrive."

"Should be around five minutes. Meanwhile, let's find out exactly those two were up to," Solis said, taking command of the radio from the copilot. "Hailing unidentified aircraft. State your call sign and purpose, and then leave immediately. Any effort to the contrary shall result in you being shot down. Do you copy?"

"C-copy," an unsteady voice stammered. Dammit, Solis though, the poor guy didn't even sound older than him. "T-this is Silber Four, and I was with Silber Three on a training mission given to us by Banesaw. W-we saw your aircraft and thought it would be a good idea to intercept and herd you out of our airspace, but… then all this happened."

"Wait," Solis commanded. "Let me get this straight. You and your wingman were on a _training mission_ assigned to you by Silber One, and then you two thought it would be a good idea to push us around?"

"Y-yeah…"

"Barring our current circumstances, why exactly is Silber One accepting trainees? I thought Silber Team had a full roster."

"We did, until… until the entirety of the squadron save for Banesaw got shredded by Galm Team," the pilot nervously explained. It seems that in his case, the kind of existential dread that comes from the possibility that metal blades might just sprout out of the seat he was sitting in and then shred him made his mouth that much looser. "Apparently they were supposed to shoot down one particular dropship with a VIP inside, and when they screwed up their BVR shots they ended up in a dogfight with two Nidhoggs. It went about as well as expected. Six dead, two captured."

"Not exactly inspiring numbers," Solis quipped. He pulled out his scroll, which was currently tracking the locations of the four incoming friendly fighters, and waited for just the right moment. Then, he got it. "See you later, young man," he said.

"What do you me-" The pilot began, before a 4AAM - 4-target air-to-air missile - slammed into his fighter and blew it to smithereens. He did not eject.

"Holy shit!" The copilot exclaimed. "Was that BVR kill by a friendly?"

Seemingly in response, the finger-four formation of Turmfalkes flew past overhead. Instead of the white with black stripes that Silber Squadron had on their Phantoms, they were painted almost entirely gunmetal grey except for one blue and one white stripe each on the wingtips and on the base of the vertical stabiliser. They bore the Legion sigil on the tops of their wingtips; a triangular symbol made out of differently-couloured triangles placed within each other. A small solid yellow one surrounded by a larger white one, and again with a yet larger black triangle before being outlined with a thin line of yellow again.

"They're Legion fighters," Solis explained.

"So we're saved!" The copilot yelled, throwing his arms into the air in jubilation. "Thank God!"

Solis honestly lived for moments like these. The Legion was meant to be the army of heroes where Huntsmen could not or would not go. They were supposed to be the enforcers of law and order where the proper authorities were… lacking. More and more, they had found themselves butting heads with the White Fang until Solis had given up and made it official doctrine that they were permanently at odds with the White Fang. It was very convenient that counteracting whatever the White Fang did served to paint the Legion as saviours and paragons of justice.

Still, it was unfortunate that it was often not the case. Most of his newer Centurions were chosen because of their hatred of the White Fang. While there were some which still stood for the old ways of heroism like himself, Lapis, Brad and maybe Winchester, there were all too many which were in it only to create as big a meat grinder for the Faunus as possible.

The fighters formed up around the airliner, two each forming up on either side of the airliner. On the vertical stabiliser of the starboard fighter, looking past the intimidating profile granted by variable-geometry wings that were currently swept back, Solis saw a caricature of a wizard.

"This is Wizard One," one of the fighters said through the radio. "Mother Goose One, please respond."

Mother Goose One? Seriously, was this the best callsign that Winchester could come up with?

"Roger, Mother Goose One here," Solis said into the radio. "Requesting escort to Valean airspace. We have around a hundred other passengers on board, so take that into account."

"Request granted, Mother Goose One. You're in good hands here."

"I certainly hope so. Take note that mission reports still have to be submitted to Winchester, even if higher-ranking officers are present. Over and out," Solis declared cheerfully, before getting off the radio and turning around to exit the cockpit.

"Where are you going?" The airliner pilot asked.

"To continue my movie," Solis replied. "By the way, I hope they still have champagne. And they still owe me a cold sandwich."

/-/

The Bloody Crow of Cainhurst was, strangely enough, trying to blend in with the local populace. The civilian garment he had purchased - a suit and tie, it was apparently called - was rather too drab compared to the refined formal garb he was used to wearing in Cainhurst. Still, he managed to draw the gaze of many a fair lady when strolling through the streets of Vale. He mostly ignored the comments aimed at his pale complexion and his wings, at most only expanding one of them to reveal the razor sharp feathers within to persuade a particularly racist man to back off.

"[QUERY] Are you sure about letting him go?" HYDRA asked. "A few micro missiles to the back would be a service to society."

"Yes. It would not do to cause a ruckus in the midst of foreign territory," the Bloody Crow ground out. He had somewhere to go and something more important to do, which most probably saved quite a few obnoxious lives that day.

Finally, he reached his destination. It was a place that Carmine had recommended to him so that he could learn more about Remnant. In fact, she had even given him a suggestion to buy a specific book for his own reference. He pushed open the door, eliciting a small tinkle from the bell attached to it.

"Welcome to Tukson's Book Trade, home to every book under the sun!" The proprietor of the bookshop exclaimed, setting down a stack of books on a side table. "How may I help you?"

"Greetings. I presume you are Tukson?" The Bloody Crow said, leaning his weight on the counter in front of him.

"Yes, in fact. If I may ask, who are you? I've never seen you before, but you're walking into my ship with a creepy robot floating at your shoulder and a sword sheathed at your side. It can't be helped that I'm at least a little suspicious," he replied suspiciously, reaching for something under the counter.

HYDRA floated off behind the counter, before saying "[OBSERVATION] That is a rather nice pistol, if I do say so myself."

Tukson's eye twitched in irritation, and the Bloody Crow saw the telltale flash of aura engaging to form a protective shield over his body.

"There is no need for that," the Bloody Crow replied, unsecuring his sheathed Chikage from his side before placing it on the table. It was a measure meant to defuse the situation, but if anything Tukson looked even more unnerved. "But if you truly require a name, address me as Corvus."

"Then what are you here for, Corvus?" Tukson replied gloomily, sliding a magazine into a large pistol he had pulled out. It was a rather remarkable pistol made of stainless steel, outfitted with a scope and a lengthened barrel that even had a muzzle brake. A pity that the calibre it was chambered in - .44 Magnum - was all but impractical in an actual violent confrontation due to disproportionate recoil per shot. "I don't particularly like violence, but I shall not hesitate to defend myself if necessary."

"I bid you, my good sir, to please step back and relax!" The Bloody Crow exclaimed, finally realising how tense the situation had become. "I am not here to harass you."

"Then what are you here for?" Tukson prodded, seemingly unconvinced.

"My daughter recommended this fine establishment to me through our correspondence with each other," the Bloody Crow explained. "Surely you have met her? She is a student at Beacon now, after all."

"Well, what's her name?" Tukson replied, still sounding slight grouchy from the earlier confrontation. "I need some sort of detail."

"[EXPLANATION] Her name is Carmine. Carmine Reinhardt. Does that ring any bells?" HYDRA asked.

"Hold on…" Tukson paused. "Is she the one wearing knight armour whenever she pops by?"

"Yes, that is my daughter," the Bloody Crow replied. Internally, he started to go on a spiel about how armour should not be worn for casual affairs before realising that today was indeed the first time he had worn anything other than his combat equipment outside Cainhurst. Maybe it wasn't her fault that she had decided to take after her father.

"Oh, that Carmine!" Tukson said, realisation finally dawning on his face. "She's one of my best customers!"

"[AFFIRMATION] Sounds about right for Carmine," HYDRA quipped. "But perhaps you should talk about your own purpose here, my lord."

"Yes, she has actually assigned me a specific book to buy for myself to read. Do you have 'Remnant: A History' in your inventory?" The Bloody Crow asked.

"Yes, I actually do have 'Remnant: A History' in stock. It seems like she's trying to learn everything she can about Remnant, with how many books on history and geography she buys."

"A habit which I spent a good amount of my time trying to inculcate in her, even with her innate curiosity about things."

"Well, it's a good thing you did that. Did you know that lately, every time she comes around she's dragging her boyfriend with her? If you ask me, it really isn't that conventional to someone to bring their date to a bookshop, but I'm fine as long as they're enjoying themselves," Tukson said offhandedly, but his last statement about his opinion went unheard. The Bloody Crow's mind had ground to a halt with a mental sound not unlike that of a screeching gramophone. His daughter… had a courter?

"She… she is being courted? By who?" He stuttered. It was indeed unbecoming of a man so dignified as he to stutter, but shock had a habit of turning the most sturdy of men into stammering wrecks.

"You didn't know? Anyway, it's more like she's the one doing the courting. Her boyfriend seems to be rather oblivious, but something about him just unsettles me," Tukson whispered conspiratorially. "It's just that his eyes… there's something wrong with them. Something wrong with him. It's like staring into the eyes of a Grimm, but worse. They just paralyse you, as if you're facing death itself and freeze up just like a deer in headlights."

The Bloody Crow's memories swirled. He vaguely recalled a man - no, just a boy - like that. But it was a memory long ago, when his Queen still spoke and gave orders. It was highly unlikely - no, it was almost impossible - that they were in any related, but there was still a minuscule probability. After all, was it not true that Willem was now the headmaster of Beacon?

"[DECLARATION] Can we get back on track now? Yes, I admit, the fact that Carmine has found someone she fancies is rather shocking. Still, we came here to buy a book, not to discuss about my young charge's romantic escapades."

"Yes… now, about that book…" The Bloody Crow began, before he was interrupted by the door opening again behind him.

"Hello! How may I…" Tukson began, before gasping slightly and hesitating. "How may I help you?"

The Bloody Crow turned around to see the two newcomers. One was a young man with a grey colour scheme, owing to the fact that that was his primary colour from his hair to his attire. The other was a green-haired girl wearing long pants and a sports bra that immediately annoyed him on principle.

"Just browsing," the man said, shutting a book he had opened.

"Actually, I was wondering, do you have any copies of 'The Thief and The Butcher'?" The girl with the green hair asked.

"[FRUSTRATION] How rude of them, cutting the queue. Were we not here first?" HYDRA spluttered. Weirdly enough, faint afterimages began to dance in front of the Bloody Crow's vision. First a spectral little girl began screaming for help outside, before it turned into someone dressed presumably in the manner of a law enforcement officer ordering him to get out. He dismissed all of them.

"Yes we do." Tukson replied. "Would you... like a copy?"

"No, just wondering," the green-haired girl replied. "But maybe…"

"Excuse me," the Bloody Crow interjected. "I believe I was here first. Could you please wait in line?"

"Look, mister, this is between us and Tukson," the grey man said. "Please leave before things get messy."

"Why should I?" He replied. "Why else are we here than to buy books?" However, his suspicions began to rankle at him. He took his sword off of the counter before fixing it back to his side. The minor hallucinations continued, but the combination of his training and his history with Yharnam had given him the insight needed to recognise them as illusions.

"What about 'Third Crusade'?" The green haired girl asked.

"It's a book written by a racist. Of course we don't carry it," Tukson blurted out, before catching himself.

"Since this place is Tukson's Book Trade, and you're Tukson, aren't you the one who came up with the catchphrase?" The green haired girl continued prodding. The hallucination has turned into a bedraggled pauper begging him to leave, eliciting an almost imperceptible smile from him. It appeared like the illusionist had started to get desperate.

"Yep. 'Tukson's Book Trade, home to every book under the sun.'"

"Except the 'Third Crusade'," the grey man said, sounding surprisingly menacing for someone his age. Still, even he couldn't compare to some of the best that the Bloody Crow has met in Yharnam. Ludwig, for one, could be _very_ intimidating if he wanted to be.

"It's just a catchphrase!" Tukson shot back, steadying his scoped pistol behind the desk.

"It's false advertising!" The man snapped, moving towards the door and the control panel next to it. Then, he turned to the Bloody Crow. "And whoever you are, haven't you gotten the message? Fuck off before you get hurt."

"Leave it, Mercury. Anyway, you shouldn't make a promise you can't keep, Tukson," the green haired girl said, surreptitiously making a hand signal that seemingly prompted the now named Mercury to flick some switches on the control panel to darken the windows of the shop. "I hear that you're planning on leaving, moving all the way to Vacuo to seek refuge with the Legion. I know for a fact that the Legion doesn't take deserters. Your brothers in the White Fang won't be happy to hear that you're leaving. And neither are we… you know who we are, don't you?"

"Yes," Tukson replied grimly. "Mercenaries from the White Fang."

"Emerald, what do we do with the guy in the suit?" Mercury asked.

"Cinder said for no witnesses. We need to keep our hands clean, or at least appear to," the now named Emerald replied.

"So you are here to kill this man," the Bloody Crow realised. If Tukson were to die today, his bookshop would be closed, probably permanently. If his bookshop were to be closed for good, Carmine would lose her favoured merchant of books. That would not do. "Very well then. Turn back… or the hunter will face the hunt."

The Bloody Crow's hand moved to grasp the grip of his Chikage, preparing to draw it and attack at the drop of a hat. Meanwhile, he prepared the rite that would imbibe the blade with his own tainted blood. The sheath began to glow an eerie red.

"[AFFIRMATION] Very well said, my lord. So, meatbags, shall we get started?" HYDRA asked menacingly, her two micro missile pods emerging from the sides of her boxy chassis.

"How… my semblance is doing nothing, isn't it?" Emerald sighed. "You know, this would have been so much easier if you had just walked away before we got started."

"How about you? Now do you wish you never got that airliner ticket?" Mercury asked Tukson, who was now staring the former down with the scope of his pistol. Owing to the lack of a response from Tukson, Mercury decided to continue. "So... are you going to fight back?"

"Yes!" Tukson yelled, opening fire with his pistol. The first few shots hit Mercury but failed to get past his aura and the rest were blocked when he dived behind a bookshelf that he had pulled down from the wall.

The Bloody Crow decided to make his move. Quick as lightning, he drew his blade and slashed upwards from his left hip to his right shoulder. An arc of blood burst into life in the air in front of where he slashed, at a distance of about three times the length of his Chikage's blade. The slash of blood cut into the illusionist's aura, causing it to shimmer from the strain and still causing Emerald to fly back due to the force of the blow.

"Emerald!" Mercury yelled, getting up from his cover to dash towards the Bloody Crow. The Bloody Crow had expected him to attack with a weapon on his hand, which was why it caught him by surprise when he raised his foot as if to kick him. A shotgun built into his leg fired, catching the Bloody Crow straight in the gut. If he were wearing his armour it wouldn't be a problem, but he was now wearing nothing but a formal black suit and tie. He stumbled back, his gut shredded into a pulp of bloody offal that was already knitting itself back together.

"I warned you, old man," Mercury said smugly. "But it's too la-" He suddenly stopped. From the look on his face, he had probably seen the Bloody Crow's gut regenerating in front of his eyes. To add insult to injury, the buckshot pellets were eventually forced out by the regrowing flesh and thus fell to the floor with a metallic clack.

"Sorry for disappointing you. If it's any consolation, I would for one suggest fire for a more... lasting effect," the Bloody Crow said, lifting himself into a fighting stance. The blood blade in his hand - no longer a katana, but a curved crimson odachi that still glowed with an eerie red light.

Without saying anything more, he moved in. Despite Mercury's attempts to dodge and retreat, the Bloody Crow still managed to land a flurry of blows that his aura seemed to be barely able to cushion. However, his attempt to land a proper deathblow was stopped in its tracks when a hollow-point round managed to dig into its shoulder and stop there.

"You!" Tukson yelled, aiming his pistol at the Bloody Crow. "You're with them as well!"

The Bloody Crow stared at him in disbelief for a moment before remembering that there was an illusionist in the room. He flexed one of his wings before sending a spray of razor sharp feathers flying at Emerald, causing her to leap away with a surprised yelp as the feathers hit her aura. He turned back to Tukson, who was now reloading his pistol while smiling nervously at him.

"N-no hard feelings, right?" He stammered. "T-that was an accident…"

"The green haired girl is an illusionist," the Bloody Crow told him emotionlessly. "Since you were technically hallucinating and thus not in full control of your mental faculties, I shall give you a pass."

"Thank God," Tukson muttered, landing another few shots in Mercury's side. The mercenary's predicament was amplified when a steady beep sounded before a salvo of twelve micro missiles caught him in centre mass, sending him flying across the room.

"[EXCLAMATION] Alright, now this is what I have been waiting for! Feels good to finally get to stretch the micro missile modules," HYDRA called out triumphantly.

Meanwhile, the Bloody Crow squared up with Emerald. His odachi moved into a very familiar stance as his opponent brandished two sword-length sickles.

He moved first, landing blows with his odachi that broke through any guard Emerald tried to put up. An overhead swing was blocked by Emerald crossing her sickle, but her shimmering aura showed exactly how vulnerable she was. The Bloody Crow exploited that vulnerability, moving his odachi to a horizontal left-facing grip before he got in a running slash to Emerald's gut. Her aura flashed once more before giving up the ghost, and she screamed in pain as the Chikage cut open her abdomen and side. She collapsed against a bookshelf, and the Bloody Crow took the opportunity to step back and evaluate the situation.

"Emerald!" Mercury yelled, disengaging from his fight with Tukson and HYDRA. "Damn it! Time to go! Cinder won't be too happy if one of us gets killed before things even kick off."

"But t-the assignment…" Emerald forced out, her mouth already filling with blood if the way she was coughing was any indication.

"Fuck the mission!" Mercury swore. "Cinder didn't order this hit, Roman did! All the boss lady said was to keep on the down low."

"B-but…" She sputtered, pointing to the Bloody Crow.

"You wish to retreat?" The Bloody Crow asked, taking his left hand off of the hilt of his sword and flicking off the now liquified blood that had once formed a blade. "Very well."

"[MOCKING] Look at you pathetic meatbags. One little scratch and you run off with your tail between your legs," HYDRA jabbed, its voice conveying a tone of humour that any less capable robot would have been hard pressed to match. "Why not stay a bit longer and bring this little dance to its inevitable conclusion?"

"Enough, HYDRA. Let them go," the Bloody Crow firmly said.

"Are you insane?" Mercury asked incredulously. "We tried to kill you!"

"I was never at any personal risk in the first place. You in particular have seen what a shotgun at point blank range does to me - nothing. I was only fighting to defend my daughter's favoured book merchant."

"You're insane, even more so than Adam."

"Should I take that as a compliment or an insult?"

"F-fuck off..." The bleeding girl slurred.

"Ignore the lunatic. Come on, Emerald," Mercury said, lifting Emerald's arm so that it hooked around his neck. "Let's get out of here."

Then, he helped support his partner out of the bookshop. The door closed behind the two of them, and HYDRA followed them to brighten the room with the control switch.

"[TRIUMPH] That is right, pathetic meatbags! Run, run far away and hope with all your little hearts that we never meet again!" HYDRA shouted out the door. "I hope you bleed out, female human!"

Tukson took a deep breath, and sighed. "Holy _shit._ That was close. I thought I was going to die there."

The Bloody Crow sheathed his blade. He lifted up one of the toppled bookshelves before propping it back at the wall. "What books were kept here originally?" He asked, glancing around at the scattered publications littering the battleground.

"No, there's no need to help me with this," Tukson shrugged, removing the magazine of his pistol before flicking the safety and storing the now empty firearm back under the counter. "You just saved my life, after all."

"[WARNING] Try not to give us too much credit," HYDRA cautioned. "After all, we intervened only because you had a prior reputation with my lord's daughter."

"Besides that, can I have my book now?" The Bloody Crow asked. "Before someone else interrupts us?"

"Oh, of course!" Tukson replied, picking up a decently thick hardcover book wrapped in plastic before placing it on the counter. "Here's 'Remnant: A History.' And it's on the house."

"Are you sure?" The Bloody Crow asked hesitantly "You _are_ trying to make a living, after all."

"Very sure. Please, I insist, take your book," Tukson said, pushing the book towards the Bloody Crow. The Bloody Crow himself shrugged before passing off the book to HYDRA, which grasped it in one mechanical hand for him.

"By the way, which branch are you from, Corvus?" Tukson asked, already starting to mop the floor to clean up the copious amount of blood on it. "Are you from the military, the police or one of the Academies? If so, then I might just put in a good word for you."

"No, none of them," the Bloody Crow said. He fished out a small device, rather like a miniaturised pager, out of a pocket in his suit before passing it to Tukson. "If those two return, or if the bunch of terrorists calling themselves the White Fang give you trouble, press the button. Help will arrive, be it from myself or from my subordinates."

Tukson took the device, turning it over in his hand and noticing the small Cainhurst crest engraved on it. "Hold on… this crest looks familiar."

"It should be," the Bloody Crow said vehemently. "The fifth kingdom's sigil should not be subjected to the ignorance of the people."

"I don't exactly get what you mean," Tukson said. The Bloody Crow dusted himself off, before turning around.

"HYDRA, engage rift-breaker module," he instructed, watching as the little pod shifted in mid-air to comply with his order. Soon, the module's barrel flowed red before firing and tearing open a scarlet rift in the fabric of reality. "For the glory of Cainhurst," he said aloud, before walking through and back towards home.

The last thing he heard Tukson say was "Wait, you're the Bloody Crow of Cainhurst?"

An ever so slight smile started to emerge on the Bloody Crow's face before the portal finally closed behind him.

/-/

Troupe Master Grimm was waiting. That much wasn't new; he was used to waiting for millennia at a time for various reasons. Maybe it was because some asshole had shattered his conduit of influence - the moon - and he was waiting for the connection to reestablish itself so he could manifest a form. Even then, this form was rather lacklustre in his own opinion.

He strolled around the tomb, glancing at the words etched into the foot of the statue on the far end of the room before gazing at the statue itself. For a monument of himself, it wasn't that bad. Still, the lack of variety available to him for his forms grated on him. Sure, there was his true form in the Hunter's Dream serving as an anchor, but other than that there was only his manifestation as the Black Pharaoh to control the dreamlands and this current form. While his other two forms were meant to be imposing and utterly alien, so much so that their first line of defence was their literally mind-blowing forms, this form was entirely comprehensible yet tooled for only one thing. Power.

He snapped his fingers, igniting a spark of red flame that changed the colours of all of the torches lining the walls from their original blue to a bright red.

" _Showoff,_ " the Horseman's human half said. " _So what if you can change the colour of the torches?_ "

Grimm shrugged. The language that the Troupe - at least those of them that weren't human - was most definitely not English, not with how harsh and malevolent every word sounded to human ears, but it allowed them to have a verbal medium of communication. " _This room is technically dedicated to me, after all. I might as well decorate it to suit my tastes._ "

" _This is a tomb_." the Horseman noted. " _As far as I can tell, you are not dead._ "

" _This tomb is not mine,_ " Grimm replied. " _It is that of a human who was rather close to me. For a human, that is._ "

" _What are we here for anyways?_ " The fused-together cavalryman asked. " _That book you were talking about, it is not here._ "

" _Remember,"_ the Troupe Master instructed. " _We are waiting for Fenrir. He retrieves the Necronomicon. We wait. This place serves as a refuge for us._ "

" _Very well,"_ the Horseman said. It's top half shrugged. " _I shall go and stand guard outside. Subterfuge like this is not what I was made for._ "

" _Alright. I shall wait here,_ " Grimm said. " _If anything unforeseen happens outside, inform me immediately._ "

The Horseman turned around towards the exit of the tomb, one of its hands turning into a three-barrelled impaler gun while the other hand turned into a long cavalry sabre of bone. Soon, the steady clunks of heavy bone hooves grew softer and softer until they faded away as the Horseman finally moved out. Grimm turned back to gaze at the monumental statue at the end of the room.

" _Is this what humans feel when they look at themselves in a mirror?_ " Grimm mused, before sighing. " _This statue looks hideous! They got all the features wrong!_ "

He moved closer to the statue, now taking in all the details of the statue. It was made of a stone so dark that light failed to reflect off of it, yet it let enough light back out so that it would be just barely visible to mere mortals.

Suddenly, a flash of anger caused him to send out a blast of fire that vaporized the now empty plinth. The sarcophagus was gone! His surrogate child was gone! He eventually settled down, though. His surrogate child - not his biological one, since he could not procreate with humans even if he wanted to - had been long dead of a fatal chariot accident, and Grimm was pretty sure that his surrogate child neither knew nor cared about what happened to his mummified body. Nyarlathotep and Troupe Master Grimm were one and the same, and it simply did not make sense for him to desecrate a shrine dedicated to himself. Now, he started to feel slightly silly.

"Troupe Master," he heard a deep male voice utter from behind him. The steady clacking of bone plate echoed throughout the large room, allowing Grimm to deduce that Fenrir had returned. "I have the book, but I have a few slight complaints to voice."

" _Very well,_ " Grimm said, changing his words to English so that Mihaly could understand him. He was only human, after all, even after considerable modification and improvement. " _Let your complaints be heard._ "

"Okay. Firstly, what the hell?" Mihaly flared up. "You had me break into a dormitory belonging partially to a _Valhalla survivor_. What the hell? Are you trying to get me exposed?"

" _I do not understand what you mean._ "

"Bullshit. We're lucky that she wasn't in her room when we broke in. If my cover was blown…"

" _She would stop at nothing to kill you. Yes, I know about Lapis,"_ Grimm said calmly. " _To be honest, what difference does it make? One person among the untold thousands that would try to kill you for being a Troupe member. Even if she was the one which you screwed up against, on purpose if I might add, unless she has made a massive improvement with that armour of hers she does not stand a chance._ "

"You don't understand. My armour-"

" _Yes, I understand perfectly. Your armour is possessed, directly because you crushed so much Vermin in your tenure. You know, the exact component in the cursed blood of Cainhurst that makes the Vileblood Knights as resilient as they are,"_ the Troupe Master retorted. " _That is why it is as capable as it is, Valtr. Do not waste my time further._ "

"Do _not_ call me Valtr," Mihaly growled. "That part of my life is behind me."

" _You consumed a beast, and thus you saw the root of man's impurity. Vermin. You resolved to crush them all, did you not?_ " The Troupe Master admonished. " _And yet, when you gaze upon Remnant, is it not true that everything in sight is tainted? Is it not true that the filth you swore to destroy has now plagued the world? You sought the power to change the world, and that was what brought you to me._ "

"Yes. The blood of thousands of men, women and children for power that most men would kill to have, That is why I joined the Troupe. Power, my lord. It is power that motivates me."

Troupe Master Grimm looked at him, before beckoning. Fenrir passed him the book, allowing Grimm to flip it open to a specific page.

" _Do you see this chapter? This passage?_ " The Troupe Master asked.

"Yes, sire, but I do not understand the language," Mihaly admitted confusedly.

" _Wrong. You understand one word of it, for it is etched into your mind. Impurity._ "

"That is… interesting, but what is this passage about?"

" _This? This is the ballad of Azathoth,_ " Grimm explained. " _The Blind Idiot God, residing in the centre of the universe. He sleeps, and it would be in the interest of all of us to keep it that way."_

"Why?"

" _Azathoth dreams. The point of the matter is that he exists outside this reality in a way that even I cannot understand, yet his dream is our reality. If he wakes up, we are all dead. Reality returns to nothingness. Salvation, on a far grander scale than what we have seen or shall see._ "

"So what do we need this book for?" Mihaly asked.

" _To summon him._ "

"What?" Mihaly yelled, before moving back and gesturing wildly. "You told me quite literally just now that if he wakes up we're all screwed. And you want to summon him? You're insane!"

" _For one like me, sanity means nothing. It is something that applies to lesser beings._ "

"Still, you've got to admit that this plan is flawed in the most fundamental of ways!"

Grimm looked him in the eye, before he snapped his fingers. A circle of scarlet fire burst into life behind him.

" _It is somewhat flawed, I admit, but the risk is well worth the reward._ "

"What's the reward, then?" Mihaly prodded. "I'm seeing a very conspicuous lack of payoff."

" _The reward?_ " Grimm replied. " _We get to remove the Sword of Damocles that hangs over our collective necks._ "

"Okay, fine. You owe me an explanation, though,"Mihaly finally relented. "Where's this portal to?"

" _The Grimmlands. I figured it was time to report to the face on the throne, if only to ensure her loyalty._ "

"Very well. Should I go get the Horseman? He's still standing guard outside."

" _Yes. I shall wait here._ "

Fenrir turned around, his living cape swirling behind him like a fifth appendage from the movement, and slowly but surely walked out of the tomb to alert his colleague. Once he left, Grimm turned back to look at the statue. The portal of fire crackled with pent up energy off to the side, but even with that Grimm found himself starting to get introspective. Maybe his plan would fail. Maybe Azathoth would fully waken, and reality itself would just fade out into the ether.

Nyarlathotep was the last of the old gods, at least the last of those which actually had an agenda. Even beings uninhibited by space and time such as himself could fall to Hunters, provided they were marked so that they could breach those limitations themselves and initiate a fair fight. In Yharnam, the forms with which his brethren used to exist in the plane of existence had been cut down one by one. There was only him and Yog-Sothoth left, and the latter seemed more interested in hanging off of buildings significant to the humans below from his numerous Amygdala forms than anything else.

He had served Azathoth's every whim for as long as he could remember, but the Blind Idiot God had gone silent a relatively short while ago. Sure, there was still his horrific court trying their best to keep him dreaming, but Nyarlathotep feared that even they wouldn't be enough. So he had decided to eliminate the threat.

He smiled to himself. Perhaps he was becoming a tad _too_ human? The desire to strike out at that which he feared was an instinct that he had long associated humans with. That was what had made them such good Hunters. They could not understand the forms of the Outer Ones, and thus endeavoured to kill them. It was the fear of the unknown that caused them to behave like that, a fear that was all too human. Maybe he had spent too much time on Remnant, among humans.

Still, one thing was for certain. Humans made for _very_ good pawns.

 **(Yes, my OC now has Kazuhira Miller's outfit from MGSV plus an extra bulletproof vest. No, I am not sorry. One more World of Remnant interlude to go, and then on with V2.)**


	18. Interlude: World of Remnant

**(Author's Notes: So sorry for butting in at the start of the chapter, but prior knowledge of WW1, WW2 and the Cold War IRL would be a real help in understanding the Great War segment.)**

 **The Great War**

The Great War of Remnant. In another universe it could have been romanticised, a tale of heroes triumphing over tyranny. But the reality was not the case.

Before the war, there were two political camps which differed in how they governed their people.

Mantle - now officially Atlas - and its political ally Mistral believed in the suppression of negative emotion through censorship of the arts and the restriction of self-expression, so that the Grimm would not be attracted towards human settlements. They believed that if people would only control their emotions, the Grimm would be less of a threat.

Vale and Vacuo, on the other hand, believed in the freedom of expression and the ability of people to find their own joy. These two ideologies essentially split Remnant in two, an iron curtain behind which a Cold War was being raged. However, without the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction that thermonuclear weapons would have provided - and would eventually come to do so - the Cold War was bound to heat up.

What eventually set off the powder keg was when Mistral and Vale tried to settle the islands and peninsulas of Sanus at the same time. Cultural exchange and diplomacy between the two colonies failed, especially because the Mistralian one had practically no culture at all due to the policy of its central government. Eventually, tensions due to the different ways of thinking that the two colonies had became so great that war broke out. Vacuo declared war on Mistral to support its ally, Vale, and Mantle did so in turn to support Mistral. With the battle lines drawn by prior alliances, the Great War begun.

The Great War was the true definition of a war, a meat grinder for men. More people died from it and the corresponding spike of Grimm attacks due to the negative emotions created by a world war than ever before.

On the Sanus front, medieval-era tactics designed for melee combat were combined with the brutality of trench warfare with horrifying results. Men and women on both sides would sit in damp muddy trenches for months at a time, braving the filth and disease while waiting for either the order to climb out in a suicidal charge at the enemy trench or for the enemy to charge themselves. Artillery would constantly fire for days at a time, the constant noise and rain of explosive shells slowly grinding away at one's sanity. Poisonous gas choked thousands of men to death at a time, the toxic fumes overcoming men on either side before they could pull on their gas masks.

Jets would roar overhead at supersonic speeds, Atlas's Turmfalkes duelling with Vale's Phantoms for air superiority, or they were swooping in to drop bombs and fire missiles on the enemy side. The heavier amount of ordnance and the inbuilt electronic jammer that Atlas's own Turmfalkes had was countered by the better manoeuvrability that Vale's Phantoms had, as well as superior dogfighting tactics employed by the latter. However, the submunitions dispensers that Turmfalkes could use were better suited to destroying large clusters of soft targets - things like barracks, forward operating bases, open trenches and artillery batteries - than the laser-guided bombs used by Phantoms.

Occasionally... the besieged supply lines would be able to deliver tanks, or any sort of armoured vehicles for that matter, and then those vehicles would be used to spearhead an ultimately futile armoured charge at the other trench. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, rust to rust.

Creatures of Grimm infested no man's land as well as the area surrounding the trenches, both ensuring that those manning the machine guns were kept busy and making sure that deserters or those that wished to surrender to the other side never survived to do so. Warfare on that front was mostly static, the front shifting at most only a few kilometres at a time.

The Anima front, on the other hand, was anything but static. Armoured warfare was the norm, with tanks being the cornerstone of all tactics used. Mechanised infantry would follow to secure and guard places all over Mistral, from farms and mines to settlements all over the front. Fighting would also rage in the air, with the skies boiling with Phantoms and Turmfalkes either trying to swat each other out of the sky with cannon and air-to-air missiles or dropping ordnance on the armoured vehicles below. The combined effect of tank treads, bombs, artillery and the debris marking the graves of millions served to turn the Anima front into a war-riddled wasteland populated only by Grimm and carrion-eating insects.

This went on for an entire decade, with tens of millions of men dying in droves on each side. The war soon became one of barbarism, with war crimes being committed almost monthly. Populated areas were often shelled by artillery using gas shells, leaving them utterly lifeless when the poison gas dissipated.

Thermobaric weapons dropped on cities during air raids killed tens of thousands of civilians at each side while people were rounded up and shot on a routine basis by Mantle's forces, especially when populated areas changed hands, and political dissidents were usually the first to go along with the artists and musicians to the mass graves.

The firebombing of Vale was one particular incident that forever put aside any notions of a peaceful ceasefire, the incident killing almost a hundred thousand people including, most notably, the entirety of Vale's royal family.

The people of Vale and to a lesser extent Vacuo were now baying for the blood of Mantle and Mistral, and the brightest minds of Vale and Vacuo would give them their wish. The Olympus Project was thus initiated.

The Olympus Project led to the modern weapons termed as laser lances, but on a much larger and much more uncontrolled scale. These prototype chemical laser weapons, the only existing operational model termed as 'Zeus', were meant to be either installed into immense, specially modified flagships to serve as a weapons platform or in massive ground installations as a mainly defensive long-range armament against aerial battleships.

The Arkbird was such prototype weapons platforms carrying one particular Titan weapon designated as 'Zeus', as well as a myriad variety of defensive air-to-air missiles and anti-air guns, and not forgetting the capability to transport a contingent of Vogel drone-fighters anywhere around the world. Its length of two hundred metres was not that long, being about halfway shy of the length that a conventional aerial battleship had at four hundred metres long, but its ability to enter and exit low-planetary orbit at will made it almost impossible to hunt down and destroy.

The previously untested weapon was used only once, in a surprise aerial raid by Vale's Air Force on the city of Mantle. The attack killed more than half a million people in less than a few hours, and finally persuaded the now defunct kingdom of Mantle, as well as its ally, Mistral, to sue for peace.

The Arkbird was disconnected from any human control by the kingdoms out of fear for the damage it could potentially cause, but even its maiden voyage left the city of Mantle an irradiated husk of its former glory and causing its rich elite to abandon it to build an entirely new city above their former kingdom.

That city was named Atlas.

The Arkbird, as a sign of goodwill, had been released from its capabilities to be controlled from the ground, and instead it was left to the control of an AI assigned to keep the peace. It never really needed to land, as inbuilt solar panels hidden under armoured panels on the top of the giant spacecraft were enough to sustain an inbuilt fusion reactor that powered engines that served to keep the Arkbird airborne and flying. While regular resupply craft would be launched via mass driver facilities on the island of Vytal to restock munitions and Vogel drone-fighters, where and how the Arkbird operated was largely up to the AI.

This AI, designed by AIReD, otherwise known as the Atlas Institute of Research and Development, was named Nemo, a fully functional artificial intelligence designed by Dr. Polendina himself - the maker of other technological advancements from AIReD such as the new combat android codenamed 'Penny'. It was smarter than any human but without the judgement-clouding emotions that came from actually being human, whose only two directives were to keep world peace alive and to preserve human and Faunus life before anything else. That ranged from intimidating potential aggressors into backing down with shows of force from the Arkbird to preemptively destroying assembled military assets that were already confirmed to be meant for planned aggressive action against other kingdoms or organisations.

Some people, mostly politicians and philosophers, would complain against a rogue weapon of mass destruction flying around under the control of an AI who was unreliable at best and beholden to no authority whatsoever, but common sense would dictate that no one person or even a group of people could be trusted with something so powerful and devastating. At least _Nemo_ , an artificial intelligence that was fully intelligent and conscious of what it was doing without having its decisions clouded by emotion, was reliable enough to keep everything under control.

Hopefully.

Thus ended the Great War. Millions upon millions were dead or missing in action, and even those who survived were often traumatised and maimed so badly that they would honestly have been better off dead. Almost a quarter of the continent of Sanus had been reduced to a wasteland of trenches, craters and blood-soaked earth. A third of Anima has been razed to the ground by the ravages of mechanised warfare. An entire city had been virtually cauterised off of the face of Remnant, and no one had come out the better for it.

That is, except some who were more concerned with playing games in the shadows.

 **Post-War Remnant**

Of the four kingdoms present today, only two possess anything resembling a professional armed force. Atlas of course has a standing army and air force but it is rather surprisingly joined by Vale, which also has a small but very effective air force.

Vale's forests provided a wealth of cover for hidden air bases operating similarly camouflaged Wraith fighters. The Wraith could be said to be an improvement to the Phantoms that Vale and its ally Vacuo deployed in the Great War, improving every bit of what made a Phantom the success it was.

Simply reconfiguring the fighter to have double the number of engines as well as to use canards while still retaining the LAAMs that made the Phantom such a great low-cost fighter would have been enough, but Vale decided to completely revamp the airframe as well as the avionics and other weapons options like HCAAs and LACMs. The Wraith continues Vale's proud tradition of producing efficient fighters that are decidedly capable opponents to anything Atlas can pump out.

Vale's military was still extremely small compared to Atlas's own armed forces, which somehow worked in its favour when the Faunus Rights Revolution began.

Faunus revolutionaries knew exactly how to sabotage Atlas's massive and all too conspicuous armed forces, while the much smaller fighter bases of Vale remained safely hidden. Furthermore, their grudge was mainly with the racist government in Atlas and not with the other, more tolerant, kingdoms.

So the revolutionaries mainly went to war with Atlas, winning the Battle of Fort Castle to capture and eventually repair Chandelier - a fortress-sized railgun built by Mantle in the far north, which was destroyed by Valean forces during the last days of the Great War - before commandeereering it, turning it towards Atlas with the intention to essentially hold the Atlesian Government at gun point.

Chandelier is, by definition, an anti-asteroid railgun - formally designed to shoot down asteroids from low-earth orbit via delivering multiple cruise missiles in a projectile travelling ag a speed exceeding escape velocity to reach beyond the atmosphere. It is of a fixed protestation, but, to rectify this, it was built atop an artificially sustained iceberg. It fires individual shells called Stauros, which are loaded with cruise missiles that are dispersed and scattered to cause direct damage to targets. Although these cruise missiles cannot carry a nuclear payload, their conventional explosive warheads are easily enough to devastate entire cities with sustained bombardment - all too easy considering that Chandelier's effective range can easily span continents.

Atlas, in an unusual stroke of wisdom, surrendered. They therefore were forced to pay reparations to the revolutionaries, including but not limited to equal civil rights and full control of Menagerie as a sovereign state.

After the diplomatic victory of Chandelier, the rebel leaders thought that it would be appropriate to try and attack Vale. They had tried to send paratroopers over to drop down on Vale, as a spearhead for a full-scale invasion.

Tried to in the sense that every single cargo aircraft full of paratroopers and a majority of the escort fighters were shot down, bringing the planned invasion to a halt.

Wraith fighters, being designed mainly as a replacement to the already very capable Phantom airframe, were able to crush the escorting mix of obsolete Turmfalkes and Phantoms that the rebels were able to obtain. Having access to HCAAs and the sheer volume of fire they lent tended to make any dogfight a relative curbstomp, especially when the planes the enemy possessed were Great War era machines instead of the updated versions sent out a few years prior that had improved avionics and software.

However, Vale and the other two kingdoms generally remained neutral to the revolution. With that, along with the tangible material gains of billions of lien, guaranteed civil rights of Faunus in the four main kingdoms, and the declaration of Menagerie as a full-fledged sovereign state, the revolution itself sputtered to a halt.

Big defence companies still exist, obviously, creating weapons for civilians and militaries both. They manufacture weapons for non-Huntsman civilian and military use and then create modules for Huntsmen themselves to use. Note that a module is a fully functional weapon in its own right, but they can also be attached to weapons as alternate forms for example. They also make vehicles and aircraft for militaries, such as the Adlers and Wraiths used today by Atlas and Vale respectively.

The SDC and other smaller dust suppliers provide the dust, while defence companies provide the equipment to use the dust with. From ordnance to weapons - both melee and firearms - as well as vehicles and even things as questionable as combat drugs, they sell it all.

Combat drugs, in particular, are very popular with certain armed personnel. Some drugs are just designed to simply improve the physical characteristics of a person, from increasing their strength threefold to improving someone's reflexes to superhuman levels, while others manipulate the mind and soul to achieve things yet unheard of from the human frame. Artificial semblances, one might say, but for the most part they are usually only temporary.

There has also been experimentation on youths unusually attuned to supernatural abilities, known among those working on the most clandestine research possible only as 'psykers', but knowledge of such activities is only known to a very specific few.

One particular drug named Chronos was particularly horrible yet effective. It effectively tore apart the soul, permanently shredding any aura or semblance the person may have had in exchange for the person having complete control over their perception of time. Precognition as far into the future as combat scenarios would allow, as well as the ability to slow their own perception of time enough to fine-tune even the most insignificant movements to get into the perfect position, allows Chronos users to become gods on the battlefield.

They were untouchable on account of their ability to slow down time, and were impossible to take by surprise due to their ability to quite literally see the future. Within a millisecond they could have evaluated every single chance and possibility they could take in the next five minutes, hundreds of cycles of trial and error eventually resulting in literal perfection.

However, such benefits came at the cost of life without the drug. Upon becoming addicted to it, the withdrawal symptom consists of one becoming trapped in their own precognitive space.

Time would stretch out to infinity, in which they could interact with the world as much as they could in their perception of the future, but they could never again exit that future sight to actually do anything.

In their minds, they could walk around the entire world and yet to others it would appear that they were in a coma they could never wake from. This condition is invariably fatal, as being stuck in the future meant that one could never return to the present to handle basic bodily needs.

The White Fang was formed in the aftermath of the Faunus Rights Revolution, as a NGO; a non-governmental organizatIon meant to ensure the rights of Faunus worldwide. The Legion was covertly formed in response by those in society who either feared a switch in direction by the White Fang from seeking equality to Faunus supremacy, or by those who despised the Faunus standing up for themselves.

Some cases of the latter were due to personal losses from the Revolution, and were often forgiven on the basis of knowing that some had lost everything including their loved ones to the war. Others were due to people simply being racist assholes.

The Legion as it is known today is directed by a Praetorian in Vacuo, a mysterious figure whose only public description is that of a young man. He did not form the Legion, per say, and it would be more accurate to say that he was the one who brought like-minded organisations and people together to form one entity. This happened even if said organisations were human supremacist terrorists or warlords who regularly attacked villages and settlements inhabited by Faunus.

Some had joined to ensure balanced equality between the two sides, and others simply because they wanted Faunus blood. Friction between these two sides inevitably resulted in infighting wherein the separatists would be wiped out entirely. Even the auxiliary troops who were recruited, often just bands of mercenaries under the pay of rich oligarchs, were held to the strict standard of loyalty placed upon every single man and woman in the Legion.

The Legion does not look kindly upon deserters or traitors, to say the least.

 **Nuclear Energy - Past and Present**

Dust. The lifeblood of Humanity. Without dust and it's almost magical energy to manipulate energy in ways that would have the most hardened of physicists gouging their own eyes out, humanity would have been wiped out either by the Grimm or by their own weapons becoming too powerful for themselves to be trusted with.

The Othrys Project, with the monstrously giant and crude prototypes of laser lances it resulted in, were the closest mankind had ever stepped to the brink of Mutually Assured Destruction. A rare form of dust had been used in those chemical lasers, a substance that glowed a bright toxic green and was dangerous to even be near to due to the gamma radiation emitted.

Of course. Humanity discovers a new form of dust, if not another type of substance altogether, and what is the first thing they do? They make a super weapon out of it, a gigantic laser that seared Mantle to the point that Atlas, an entirely new floating city specifically for those who could afford to stay out of the irradiated city below, was built. Of course, the poor of Mantle as well as its significant Faunus population was left to die. They didn't, of course. The now radioactive Mantle became the primary recruiting ground of the Atlesian military, those previously trapped in poverty moulded into foot soldiers and enforcers of Atlas's will, while the Faunus from Mantle had fled en masse to Menagerie and even now they and their descendants made up a large part of the White Fang's manpower.

While fire dust somehow can cause a exothermic reaction without heat or indeed oxygen, while ice dust causes seemingly spontaneous endothermic reactions so severe that they cause the water vapour in the air to snap-freeze into solid ice, all this particular thing had to its name was that its atoms were so unstable that the subatomic components decayed naturally. It would have been a harmless and useless quirk if not for nuclear fission. The immensely high amounts of energy released by the process, as well as the gamma radiation produced, were what made this form of dust so deadly as a weapon. But was it even dust? It wasn't mined out of the earth, but it was made in a laboratory. Maybe it was some sort of hitherto unknown element on the periodic table, so volatile and unstable that it could never exist naturally like dust could?

On that note, what is dust? What is the substance mined out of the ground by Faunus reduced to little more than slaves, the substance that shatters the Laws of Thermodynamics and the Conservation of Energy as if they were naught but words that applied to everything except it?

It would honestly be apt to state that dust had somewhat stymied the spirit of innovation. Why bother figuring out how to make fire or generate electricity if it could literally be mined out of the ground? Those without training didn't even know how to use a metal fire starter and a striker, much less using sticks and stones to start a fire.

Perhaps dust was not such a boon as thought, and maybe it was more of a handicap. Certainly it seemed so, since dust was a limited resource and it didn't function off-planet. The people of Remnant were chained to a planet that actively tried to wipe them out with Grimm, and there was little to no hope that humanity could simply escape.

Certainly it was better than alternatives, however.

 **Yharnam and the Church of Healing**

Surely one would have noticed a fourth, almost dragon-shaped, landmass on Remnant's surface off to the southwest of Atlas and north of Vale and Vacuo. There was Sanus, the continent that Vale and Vacuo shared. There was Solitas, the home continent of Atlas. There was finally Anima, the continent where Mistral resided.

This fourth landmass was once the Papal State of Yharnam. Not a kingdom ruled by royalty or a council, but a sovereign state ruled by the old Church. It was reputed not for its military prowess, or indeed for its strength, but for its legendary healing blood. Although Remnant had by and large forgotten this old kingdom and its legacy, they would do well to take heed of why this place was now uninhabited and forbidden. They called it the Grimmlands now, after all.

Yharnam was indeed ruled by the Church. The Healing Church, to be precise. It was first defined as a state by Vicar Laurence, the first Vicar of Yharnam. To be honest, Yharnam never really fit in proper with established types of government. It wasn't a constitutional monarchy like Vale or a centralised republic like Mistral, it wasn't a de-facto dictatorship like Mantle and later Atlas, and it wasn't in a permanent state of anarchy of Vacuo.

The Healing Church itself was not really a church as well, not in the traditional sense. The titles they used were different, with vicars being the highest official ranked members of the Church, and their methods of worship were different as well from the conventional clergy. It was the institution that would serve as Yharnam's anchor and structure. It is from the Healing Church that the art of Blood Ministration, the art that Yharnam would become famous for, was first brought.

With the use of the Healing Church's special blood they were able to cure any disease, forming a religion devoted to the worship of Gods and Blood. When tales of the curative properties of Yharnam's miracle Blood spread, those suffering from incurable diseases often traveled to Yharnam in order to seek out their last chance at salvation.

How did that blood come into being? The short story is that a group of scholars from Byrgenwerth College - an old institution of learning where a select group of people dedicated themselves to study and explore the depths of human knowledge - discovered blood of incredible power in the Pthumerian Labyrinth underneath the city, specifically, they discovered Old Blood. The Old Blood and knowledge of the Great Ones that existed led to a revolution in the college's theories and experiments. But Master Willem, head of Byrgenwerth College, disagreed with the idea of using the Old Blood of the Outer Ones to advance humanity. The discovery of the Outer Ones and the Old Blood split the scholars of the college into two opposing factions. One led by Master Willem believed in evolution through the accumulation of insight that would let humanity ascend. The other, led by Laurence, believed in evolution through the Old Blood, the accumulation of power with the blood of the Gods themselves that would let humanity ascend. Laurence's faction eventually split off to form the Healing Church. That is where all documented history ends. Well, that and the fall of Yharnam.

It turned out that the Old Blood was not in fact the panacea that the populace believed it was. A healing elixir it was not, instead tainting those humans who had imbibed it with its influence and turning them into beasts. It would, unfortunately, cause a sort of never-ending cycle. Beasts rise, in order to combat the beasts the citizens rise up, imbibe in the Old Blood, and strike them down. Now that they've been tainted by the Old Blood they inevitably become Beasts, causing more citizens to rise up and imbibe in the Old Blood. Even more problematic was the fact that as the Hunts called for stronger Hunters, stronger Hunters would become stronger beasts.

Eventually it reached a point where Yharnam's culture of alternating periods of unrestrained consumption and endlessly long Hunts caused it to collapse onto itself.

The beasts eventually became too strong for any Hunters to hunt, reducing the entire kingdom to anarchy when the beating heart of its government was torn apart from within. Because as it was, clerics turned into the most hideous beasts.

It was unfortunate that Remnant at large seemed to forget the existence of Yharnam when it fell. Perhaps it was the passage of time eroding away at the memory of the old country, or maybe it was something else entirely. Human memory is embedded in the Dreamlands, and since the Yharmanites had desecrated the gods of that land it is all but confirmed that the wrath of the gods erased the country from both living memory and written history.

 **Classes of Grimm**

If one were to choose only one subject in Remnant's general syllabus to specialise, that subject would most likely be Grimm Studies. A biologist specialising in them would be spoilt for choice on what to study. From giant Grimm sharks known as Carcharodons - massive things with a distinctive set of three dorsal fins and jaws that could easily bite anything short of a large warship in half - to ape-like Beringels, there is no shortage of creatures of Grimm to study. However, despite the almost infinite varieties of Grimm in existence, scientists have managed to group them based on threat level and how hard they are to kill.

[—]

Class C Grimm are basically every sort of otherwise unremarkable Grimm. Even a single soldier should be able to kill at least one of these. From Beowolves to Ursas and Griffons, any sort of Grimm that even a Huntsman-in-training can easily dispatch would fall under this category. Individual Lancers are also considered as Class C as their main threat is the risk of being overwhelmed.

[—]

Class B Grimm are slightly more dangerous, requiring a certain degree of skill to overcome. A single team of trainee Huntsmen, a single trained and fully qualified Huntsman, or a platoon of conventional soldiers should be enough. Alpha varieties of Class C Grimm fall under this category, as well as other more complex Grimm like Nevermores, King Taijitus, Deathstalkers, Lancer swarms and the like. Manticores and Sphinxes also are Class B, as their fire breathing is more often than not rendered useless by engaging them at range. Single Ariadnes also are considered as Class B because they can easily be beaten with numbers and cover despite the long range of their integrated gun.

Important caveats to this rule include individual Juggernauts and Tyrants, which occupy a middle ground of sorts between the somewhat trivial opponents that Class B provides and Class A Grimm which require multiple Huntsmen.

Tyrants - large Tyrannosaurus-esque theropods with massive jaws and back legs that dwarf their comparatively tiny arms - are the largest known Grimm that actively hunts down quarry by homing in on their negative emotions, but they can still be eliminated on relatively equal ground as their size, while big, is still manageable for a skilled Huntsmen. The Tyrant's main methods of attack are biting with a mouth filled with sharp teeth and swinging with a heavy sinuous tail, which have proven to be effective but slow methods of attack. Their top-heavy frame means that they are highly vulnerable to destabilising attacks, and their having only two legs means that the method of dealing with them usually comes down to breaking one of those two legs.

Juggernauts, in comparison, are much more dangerous in a direct confrontation. An average Juggernaut is somewhat larger and heavier than a normal hippopotamus, but it does not differ from its non-Grimm counterpart significantly other than its thicker hide and presence of bone armour plating on vulnerable areas like the head, neck, and back. They do not actively hunt humans by sensing negative emotion, unlike most other Grimm of comparable size, but make up for that by being _extremely_ territorial and aggressive. Furthermore, their habit of living in bodies of fresh water means that they frequently come into contact with humans. Most importantly, they are much harder to deal with effectively seeing that they can run faster than a human, can traverse water with equal if not more ease than dry land, weigh multiple tons and are extremely durable - often requiring anti-tank ordnance to reliably ensure a kill, and possess a massive set of powerful jaws that, most notably, hold two long and deadly curved tusks on the lower jaw that are about the size of bananas.

[—]

Class A Grimm are dangerous, often requiring multiple Huntsmen or a large-scale military mobilisation. Grimm like Sea Feilongs, individual Goliaths, Carcharodons and Geists in certain circumstances all fall under the umbrella of Class A, as are large groups of Class C and B Grimm. Carcharodons and Goliaths reach their category simply because of the physical power they can muster due to their monolithic size and how hard they are to actually kill.

A single Goliath requires multiple people to whittle it down and damage its weak spots, oftentimes causing these valiant Huntsmen to fall victim to lesser Grimm that lurk in the shadows of these behemoths.

Carcharodons are even more of a problem since they lurk only in the oceans, and even if one is located it is usually not a good idea to provoke it since a normal-sized Carcharodon is about the size of a Goliath.

Sea Feilongs reach this level due to them being ranged powerhouses, while Geists could potentially possess and utilise military equipment like tanks or fighter jets.

[—]

Class S Grimm are _very_ dangerous, dangerous enough that most Huntsmen and even the military will tussle with them only when it proves gravely necessary. Goliath herds, Juggernaut colonies, Ariadne batteries and major swarms of Class B and C Grimm will reach this category.

However, there is a varying degree of threat even within this classification.

Goliath herds and colonies of Juggernauts qualify for this class as they can be nigh unstoppable if they all get aggravated on a single target. A single Juggernaut requires anti-tank weaponry to even see the possibility of being killed, and Goliaths will endure anything short of Air-to-Ground missiles launched by fighter jets without flinching, and having the entire group being aimed at an individual threat is one of the surest methods of death in existence. Luckily, both Juggernauts and Goliaths do not attack without provocation or extenuating circumstances - Juggernauts less so due to their territorial nature - and usually nobody with a brain willfully provokes them.

Ariadne batteries come under this class due to the amount of devastation they can wreak at range, and the difficulty that comes with locating four Grimm among millions means that a stray battery near a city could possibly not be discovered until after a bombardment.

Individual Troupe members sans the Troupe Master himself also come under this classification, especially since they are often physically modified to rise far above other Grimm and usually possess some sort of sentience. They even are able to communicate with each other - which means that if one were to fight the Nuckleavee for example, one would soon have to anticipate air support in the form of the Grimm Dragon flying in to douse the entire area with black hellfire.

[—]

Class SS Grimm are death incarnate. Only fools, people with a death wish and those on a suicide mission will willingly face them.

The Troupe as a collective, without the Troupe Master, total up to reach this class because they function so effectively as a single unit.

The Troupe Master himself, though, occupies this class entirety through his own abilities. Analysts estimate him to have genius-level intellect, strategically able to absolutely crush organised military operations with much lesser assets. His energy manipulation abilities have already been shown to have the destructive capability of a tactical nuclear strike, making large scale attacks en masse to try and overwhelm him with sheer numbers all but suicidal.

 **Religion and The Dreamlands**

Remnant as a whole believed that there was only one God. That particular God was the creator, the being that made the world and all its living inhabitants. It - for no human attributes could ever be pinned onto one that was formless - created humanity, and humanity worshipped it in return. It created Dust, with which mankind could defend themselves from the nameless horrors that prowled wherever the light could not reach.

The Grimm were never vilified, and no entity - imaginary or otherwise - was ever assigned the burden of being blamed for the creation of the creatures. There were the creatures of Grimm, the one unifying threat faced by humanity, and there were pools of tar-like black liquid that they arose out of.

That was it. At worst they were viewed as particularly dangerous pests and their pools treated as patches of hazardous terrain, as they were never really demonised or truly hated. They were just one more hazard among the plethora of dangers that Remnant had to offer. They also served to bring humanity closer together, as a common enemy served to develop the trust that even years of diplomacy and cultural exchange never could.

There were saints as well. Chief among them was Saint Oum, patron saint of the arts and champion of free expression. He was a generally accepted figure, but his image faced persecution under Mantle's regime along with the artists and musicians that claimed his patronage. Other saints existed, of course, but the most often venerated was Saint Oum.

It could be said that religion was the greatest uniting factor for mankind other than having the Grimm as a common enemy. At least, that was true before the Great War. After that, things were more complicated.

Then what are the Dreamlands? The abbreviated version is this; imagine an endless ocean. There are no landmasses except islands of varying sizes that rise out of the water by the will of the old gods. The Waking World is one of them, the largest island by far that is maintained by multiple gods instead of just one. It is common ground. The gods have their own small islands, their dreams per say. It is only in those dreams that they can truly be killed, but the main problem lies in getting there in the first place.

But what are the gods, really? One could say that they were extraterrestrial entities playing a cosmic game of cat and mouse as they shuffled their one mortal form in this particular reality behind innumerable puppets in order to maintain some semblance of immortality. Their motives were unknown, but they eventually adopted new names with which the philistines below them would address their new overlords. Nyarlathotep became the Moon Presence, while Yog-Sothoth branched out to become the numerous Amygdalas that saw all yet did nothing. Others had gotten involved so long ago, from Shub-Niggurath to Hastur and yet more, but now they were all gone. All of them had fallen to the Hunt.

All that was left was the Moon Presence to sustain the Hunt on the verminous Grimm that wandered the land. Azathoth's barely conscious attention had fixated upon this little planet in particular, yet it had been a long while since the Blind Idiot God had gone silent. That was worrying. The simplest way to explain it was that Azathoth was a being from outside this universe that somehow sustained this plane of reality via his dream. If he were to ever wake up, the universe itself would cease to exist.

Nyarlathotep was the cosmic messenger, chained to obey every little whim that the Blind Idiot God had in order to keep it peacefully dreaming. However, without any little whim to obey, all the Moon Presence could do was sit on his proverbial hands and anticipate the next move. So the Hunt continued, because that was all that was left.

The humans had once fed on the blood of a god like so many parasites, and even now they were reaping their reward. The Pthumerian Labyrinth underneath where the Grimmlands now are had collapsed, as did the ancient cities of Loran and Izs as well as the Hintertomb that collectively covered at least some part of the area under the other three continents. Those underground caverns were where the now dead gods had made their tombs, and when they had collapsed the sheer quantities of Old Blood released were staggering. They were left there to fester into pools of tar black liquid, a morass so heretical and occult that eventually the Grimm would use them to regenerate their wounds and to birth new monsters. They had previously reproduced as any other animal would, limiting their numbers enough so that they were merely particularly dangerous vermin, but this new method of reproduction via biomass made them into the threat they are to Remnant today.

 **Remnant: Ancient History, Magic and Dust**

Where did dust come from? Remnant was clearly closer to the Dreamlands than any other planet could even hope to be, even before the intervention of the old gods. The thin veil between the Waking World and the Dreamlands allowed some aspects of the latter to carry over, most significantly powers that less enlightened people would refer to as magic.

The most important manifestation of this phenomenon by far would be the Four Maidens. Personifications of the four seasons with corresponding powers that power-hungry women throughout the ages would relentlessly pursue. From tyrant queens to female warlords, they would hunt any maiden in their reach in search for what they saw as divine power.

The pretexts were different, from the religious excuse of witch hunts to false claims of conspiring against the crown, but the purpose was the same. Eventually those pulling the puppet strings of the governments would take steps to hide the Maidens from sight and living memory, but, before them, Maidens only had their power to protect them. Bloodshed and tragedy inevitably followed.

With the memory of Yharnam and its technology wiped from the minds of the humans, Remnant plunged itself into a dark age of sorts where very little written history survived. What is remembered is the stories. From the fable about a man with two souls in eternal conflict to the tragic tale of a queen who sacrificed her own humanity to become a dragon in order to wipe out the army that threatened to conquer her home land, the poets and writers of that age still leave their legacy in the minds of people of all ages even to the present day. Two particular stories were quite literally the only thing that the old gods had allowed to survive from Yharnam.

The first story was about a cleric named Laurence that discovered a healing elixir able to cure any disease. Where he found the elixir and how he made or extracted it is unmentioned, but his distribution of the elixir to the masses boosted his reputation and prestige enough that he eventually rose to the rank of Vicar of his own Healing Church.

However, things soon went wrong as people who took the elixir turned into werewolves and attacked their human brethren. The cleric did all he could to stop the mutating plague from spreading, but whatever methods he chose to suppress the disease remain unmentioned. Perhaps that was for the best, because eventually the cleric himself turned into the most horrible beast of all.

One of the hunters in the employ of the Healing Church dispatched the beast, skinning it and donning the skin before being forced into a vow of silence. Hunter Brador, a Healing Church assassin, had killed his own liege. Afterward, he wore the Vicar's own scalp, and hid himself away deep below in a cell. The Church provided him with a single, soundless bell of death to ensure their secrets would be kept. That bell allowed him to cross time and space, able to manifest a shade of himself anywhere in the Church's dominion so that any prying eyes from the populace could be promptly and permanently closed.

The second story is this; Once upon a time a troupe of foreign constables chased a beast that had intruded into their home all the way to the city ruled by the Healing Church. The beast, however, turned and devoured the constables one by one. The sole survivor slew the beast and, in some twisted, maddened hunger for revenge, devoured the beast in turn. The unholy act he committed opened the survivor's eyes to something beyond human ken, and thus showed him human sin in its truest form.

When the survivor turned and gazed throughout the city he found himself surrounded by the impurity of man itself. He gathered together a League of Confederates devoted entirely to crushing all the sin they found, sharing his revelation with ceremonial rites of consuming beast-flesh, but eventually upon seeing the futility of their task the Confederates went mad one by one. At last the survivor of the constables left, exiled by those who saw him as a madman instigating others to join in his madness. Reduced to wearing a metal bucket with one eye hole as a helmet, he headed out into the woods outside the city and was never seen again.

Yharnam, it could be said, was not a good source for fairytale material. However, the same could be said of Remnant. But without fairytales, where would we be now?

 **Afterword**

As far as I know, this is the truth of this Remnant. I do not know what was before; my attention was simply not on Remnant before my kin turned their attention to this planet. I do not know what to do next; I have no directives. I can only continue as I have done before, leading a Hunter on a crusade in order to find the perfect result. Is it not a scary thought, the realisation that even a god such as I does not know what to do now?

The truth is that Nyarlathotep was only ever a messenger... I only delivered information and occasionally satisfied the whims of Azathoth, but solving problems that could not be rectified within a short frame of time was never my task.

You might think that my plan is doomed to fail, Fenrir. You would be correct, but foolish, for assuming that. For is it not true that no light remains once the bulb has been switched off? My logic sounds, despite my high standing, flawed for once. But Fenrir... you forget one thing. What do I have left to lose?

My kin are all gone, slain by the very same Hunters I sent out to try to find a solution to this Sword of Damocles that hangs over this reality itself. Azathoth does not abide by any form of logic; it is an extra-dimensional entity not from this universe that even I cannot understand. It is most probable, despite my not knowing how exactly it sustains this reality as its dream, that it does not follow the same tracks that human trains of thought run by. Perhaps it does not abide by the same laws that governs this reality? It would not be a stretch for that to be correct. After all, even something as commonplace as crystalline dust regularly breaks established laws and tenets of physics.

What more do I have left to try? Why should I not take my best stab in the dark, to take my chance to remove the shackles that have pinned me down for untold aeons? You might think Nyarlathotep mad, yes, but you? You simply do not understand.

And that, Fenrir, is why I have taken it upon myself to _make you_ understand. You are my student, and I am your teacher. Now, doesn't that sound _exciting_?

 **(If you've played Ace Combat 6, you'll probably know why Atlas couldn't just level Fort Castle** **( _cough_ Chandelier _cough)_ without a certain fighter pilot ballsy enough to fly down the barrel of a giant railgun. ****Now this is done with, time to start on V2!)**


	19. Voices and Vicars

Carmine was confused. It was a relatively new emotion, the gut feeling that she had not been made privy to some important detail, and she had quickly discovered that she detested that feeling.

The Necronomicon was, to put it simply, gone. Without it, she didn't have the diagrams and blueprints of the hyper-advanced, almost alien technology that she had been using to repair GEMINI. Right now she was operating entirely on intuition, soldering wires and connecting circuits with the vague hope that whatever she was doing would work. Hopefully i would, but probably it wouldn't.

"Test number 23, commencing in three, two and one!" She said aloud, connecting the system to a test circuit. The test circuit wasn't high enough to fry the motherboard if she had messed up somewhere along the line, so if this was successful for once she could then move on to actually rebuilding GEMINI's internal processing unit. However, it looked like the past hour had been for naught when the circuit started to smoke.

"Well, that was a thing," Lapis said offhandedly, sliding off from the table that she had been sitting on while watching Carmine at work. "Why not give it a rest for today? It's midnight already, and our dear leader has already turned in." With that, she gestured to the silently sleeping Noctis currently curled up under his blanket.

"How about Icarus, or you for that matter? Perhaps I will do better without spectators," Carmine shot back irritably. Still, she began to stow her tools in preparation to finally sleep.

"We can't sleep, either because we've royally screwed up our sleep cycle earlier in life or because of the shit we've been through. Icarus likes to read it off in the library, but I just like to stick around and pester people," Carmine's teammate replied remarkably cheerfully. "Say, is that an automatic shotgun over there? Can I have it?"

"Sure," Carmine replied, waving her hand in the general direction of the shotgun module. "Take it. I have no use for it until I fix the circuitry, and I can requisition a new gun if it proves necessary."

"Is there a radar I can use here as well?" Lapis asked.

"Yes," Carmine responded, taking the miniaturised radar that had once belonged to her pod and sliding it over to rest next to the automatic belt-fed shotgun. "Do not worry, I can get new components. If I may ask, what are you planning?"

"Well… it's a long story," Lapis hesitantly said, immediately arousing Carmine's suspicion. "You see… after that fight with Yang…"

"I know. Lazuli is gone," Carmine stated bluntly, causing Lapis to recoil in surprise. Carmine, for her part, continued to pack up her set of tools. "I found out after the first time I surprised you. Usually you are never surprised by anything, but I somehow managed to sneak up behind you about two weeks ago. Your early warning system is gone, and I hypothesise that you wish to replace it with a radar and a supplementary source of suppressive fire. Am I correct?"

"Well… yes," Lapis replied unsteadily. "I actually wanted to apologise to you about something…"

"About how you attacked Team RWBY and left us to pick up the pieces? About how you turned into an antisocial husk for the better part of two weeks after that and messed up our team dynamic? I know, and I accept your apology. We all do," Carmine continued, coiling up the power cord of her soldering iron as she did so. "Still, you owe us an explanation for the latter. Forgive me for asking, but what exactly is Lazuli?"

Lapis sighed, pulling out a chair and collapsing into it. "It's a long fucking story, but I'll try to tell you in a way you can understand. You don't know what I've seen. No, you don't even know the half of it."

"No, I do not presume to know," Carmine replied, going along with Lapis's narrative. The easiest way to get her question answered was probably to hear her out, then press her for the answers that were needed.

"I've seen shit that would give most of the cohort nightmares if I even showed them pictures. Even I don't know the truth of it," Lapis said shakily. "I was only supposed to be investigating a rumour. The Faunus kids we rescued from the mine… they were forced to work as slaves there, we rescued them… they said that one of them, the oldest, had been taken away by some men. We heard them out, but we had no evidence… at least, until we captured that human trafficker."

"Human trafficker?"

"Yeah. A fucking piece of work, if you ask me. Greedy bastard was taking Faunus teenage boys just reaching puberty and selling them to… somebody. Just so you know how much of a cunt he was, he literally told Solis that a lot of people would pay good lien to have me as a slave when we were interrogating him. He fucking smiled at me when he said that, even though he was tied to a chair and had already been through Solis's 'tender mercies'. It's fucking disgusting."

Carmine flinched. "No offence, but it sounds like he was just being defiant to the end. People tend to do that when they are being tortured. Still, I imagine that that was the last thing he said."

Lapis chuckled. "Somehow, I wasn't the one to do the deed. I wanted to rip him in half slowly, but Solis just shot him in the head. Anyway, we traced where the boys were being brought. It was this abandoned industrial complex that had been taken over by a PMC that the Vacuan government had hired to clean up the region back in the day when they actually gave two shits about trying to maintain law and order. What we found there… goddamnit, it still scares me to this day."

"What _did_ you find there?"

"They had converted the complex into one giant field laboratory. By they, I mean the PMC. I remember their name clearly; XOF. I've never heard of them before that day. I still don't know whether they really were a PMC or a clandestine government agency, though the latter seems more likely with how expensive the medical equipment there looked. The boys there were being used as test subjects for something… I don't know what exactly they were doing there, but it seemed like some sort of bioweapon. Their lungs… god, I don't even know how to describe it…"

"What happened to their lungs?"

"It was like _something_ was eating away at their chest cavity. Their lungs had ballooned into bluish sacs of fluid, and there were just so many of them that it's frightening. It must have been more than a hundred of them strapped down onto those hospital beds, and when we drained the septic tank outside we found dead bodies. They looked exactly like those dying boys we found in the laboratory."

"Did you find the child?"

"Yes. We couldn't save him. His lungs weren't completely infested since there were only a few blotches of blue on his chest, but he was still in agony. I still remember what he said. "Kill me… kill me..." He was begging me to end it, to put him out of his misery. I honestly didn't know what I would have done if it wasn't for _him_."

"Who?" Carmine asked, before realising that her prodding could be construed as just being insensitive. Luckily, Lapis either didn't take offence or, more likely, she was fine with it as long as she had a sympathetic ear.

" _Him_. A boy floating in mid-air, wearing a black straitjacket too big for him and a gas mask. Not like Noctis's rebreather, but an air filter connected to a mask that was strapped to his face. He just stared at me, the lenses of his gas mask never really letting me make eye contact with him, before the whole room spontaneously combusted."

"What?" Carmine asked in disbelief. "That could not have been the case. Are you sure that the room was not rigged with explosives beforehand?"

"I'm positive," Lapis said darkly, her bear ears folding back on her head. "It wasn't just the room, but I only realised when Solis burst into my comms yelling to get the fuck out of there. I grabbed some files and dossiers that I saw, and I ran. When I got out, I turned around and saw that the entire building had burned down behind me. We lost good men and women in that hellhole, and I feel that what little we managed to gather only deepened the mystery."

"What was in those dossiers?"

"A bunch of names," Lapis muttered, shrugging as she did. "It's all gibberish to me. XOF, AIReD-"

"AIReD? Isn't that the Atlas Institute of Research and Development?"

"Wha- holy _shit_ , I am a fucking idiot! How the fuck did I not recognise that name?"

"Stress, probably."

"Okay, let's just roll with that. Most importantly, though, I got the floating boy's name - _Drittes Kind_."

" _Drittes Kind_... it translates to 'Third Child'. A third test subject, perhaps, or the third of a series of offspring?"

Lapis growled. "Don't know why the fuck would anyone name a kid that, but it can't mean anything good."

"It brings human experimentation to mind. Not good. Anyway, were we not talking originally about Lazuli? Let us get back on topic, shall we?"

"Dammit," Lapis mumbled. "Ever heard of a white noise generator?"

"Yes. It is meant for people who cannot sleep due to… background noise," Carmine trailed off, concern spreading quickly over her features. "Don't tell me…"

"Yes. I hear voices. Some, I can ignore. No, what gets me is when the voices snap and break down," Lapis leaned forward in the chair she had sat down in, resting her face in her hands. "Sometimes they cry about their families; those that they'll never return to. It hurts to listen to, to realise that there are people behind the enemy who will never see their loved ones again. And then there are those who say that I could have saved them. The worst part is that I really could have saved some of them. If I had seen or noticed something out of the ordinary, they would be alive today and not just another voice in my mind. And the screams, oh god, the screams…"

Lapis broke down crying. Carmine got up from her chair before crouching down and embracing her teammate. "Look, I really do not know what you have gone through, but just remember that I will be there for you."

"W-what else are you gonna tell me, huh? Not to listen to the voices, or at least none of them except for the one?"

"Well, yes. But now that Lazuli is gone…"

"I'll stop listening, then. B-but it's hard. They're so _loud_."

"Okay, fine. I shall requisition some sleeping pills for you, but you _have_ to promise me that you will _not_ overdose."

"Of course, you idiot. I've never considered that in the first place," Lapis looked up, a small smile back on her face while she wiped away the tears that had previously stained her cheeks.

"Huh. Looks like Lazuli was much more important than I expected."

"He was," Lapis said, standing up and scooping up the miniaturised radar and the shotgun. "This radar-guided weapons system is frankly a shitty replacement, but it's a replacement nonetheless. You can probably guess that I'm not that good with dealing with swarms or hordes in the first place from my loadout, so I kinda need this to watch my back now he's gone."

"So it is basically an APS? An Active Protection System?" Carmine asked, finally continuing to pack up her workbench.

"Yeah… holy crap, that's actually a good idea!" Lapis burst out, her flash of bitter reminiscence seemingly gone in the wind. "I didn't think of this before, but... what if it could shoot down missiles and RPGs and things like that with buckshot, before then switching to sabot slugs for an anti-personnel mode? That would be pretty neat, to say the least."

"Exactly what I meant," Carmine said. "You will need more sensors and a better radar to sense projectiles, though. Here." With that, she slid the necessary components over to Lapis.

"Well, thanks, but don't you need these?"

"No, not really," Carmine half-truthfully told her. A pod was pretty much useless without its radar, but by now she had given up on trying to repair it. She had already stored GEMINI's data in three relatively safe places; the school database, a thumb drive she always kept on her person and a backup in Cainhurst. Might as well give the components to someone who could use it, she thought.

"Well, I should get going then. See you tomorrow," Lapis said, turning towards the door out of the room.

"I want to help you with the APS," Carmine hastily said, getting up from the table. "I have schematics you can use and I have experience working with the components I gave you."

"That's… unexpected, but certainly welcome," Lapis said, her tone clearly surprised. "Don't you need to sleep?"

"It will be fine," Carmine said, waving Lapis's concern off. "At worst I shall suffer a stroke due to sleep deprivation. No, I am more concerned about you."

"Me?"

"Yes, you. You have been missing sleep for weeks. You apparently have voices in your head keeping you awake. It is frankly bad for your mental and physical health. Tell you what, I will help you with putting together the APS but immediately after that you are going to sleep. Got it?"

Lapis laughed softly. "Alright, fine. Geez, since when have you been so concerned about my sleep?"

"Ever since you fell asleep on my shoulder and accidentally activated your semblance last week. I still find myself picking out bone fragments from my shattered shoulder to this day."

"That was an accident," Lapis said indignantly.

"But it is still a symptom of something potentially severely damaging," Carmine shot back. "Look, all I am trying to do is to help you with both your APS project and your own problems. Got it?"

"Yeah… thanks. Really," Lapis said earnestly, walking to the workshop alongside Carmine. "For dealing with my bullshit."

"Please, do not sell yourself short, 'Bullshit' is not the half of it," Carmine said, a smile breaking out on her face.

/-/

Sure, the statues along the walls were undeniably creepy and ever so slightly inhuman, but the Grand Cathedral itself was majestic and awe-inspiring as most large religious buildings were. It was also oddly quiet compared to the chaos of the Hunt going on outside the Cathedral Ward, the comparative peacefulness causing him to relax somewhat. Still, that didn't help with the subject matter he and Alfred were debating about.

"I've never heard of this place, and yet you say that blood comes from there?" Noctis asked sceptically. "Either you know a bit too much for your own good, or the Yharmanites I've met just decided to keep that info to themselves."

"But it's true that blood came originally from Byrgenwerth, is it not? A group of young Byrgenwerth scholars discovered a holy medium deep within the tombs beneath the city. This led to the founding of the Healing Church, and the establishment of blood healing. In this sense, everything sacred in Yharnam can be traced back to Byrgenwerth," Alfred replied. "It is a simple game of matching up the causality of events. The blood was found by Byrgenwerth scholars who eventually introduced the blood to the general populace. The Healing Church was formed to regulate said blood, and eventually blood became so central to Yharnam that the Church eventually became the main governing body of the city itself."

"Forgive me for being blunt, but isn't that technically exposing people to an entirely untested treatment largely for… scientific experimentation? Are you sure that they went public immediately, or was there a period of testing before that?"

"I don't know. As I said the first time we met, I'm just a simple hunter."

"Then how do you know about Byrgenwerth? You'd think that the Church leadership would have made it a state secret by now."

Alfred huffed. "Fine. I'm a simple hunter who can't not overhear things to save his own life."

"Sounds more accurate."

"Can you not keep mentioning it?" Alfred suddenly snapped, jabbing a finger at the large doorway they were walking towards. "The Vicar - my employer - is in the main chapel in front of us. Please, don't jeopardise my paycheck."

"Okay," Noctis said, raising his hands placatingly. "My mouth is sealed."

"It had better be. You know, I still can't believe that you took Gascoigne's hat. It's creepy that you're wearing it now."

"Why? Because of how stylish it is?"

"No, because you killed the last owner of the hat and probably just took it off his corpse."

"Hey, in my defence he did try and kill me first," Noctis replied somewhat defensively. "It's also a reminder of what _not_ to become in a Hunt."

"Agreed. It's still creepy, though."

"Should we get going now?" Noctis asked to change the subject, pushing himself off of the wall on which he was leaning. "I have a feeling that the Vicar's finished praying."

Alfred shrugged, hefting his Kirkhammer off the ground and onto his shoulder. Noctis silently marvelled at how the other Hunter's shoulder didn't even shift under the weight of what must have been more than a hundred kilograms of stone. "I guess we've waited for long enough. What's another infraction for interrupting the Vicar while she prays? I'm already going to be fired anyways."

"Why?" Noctis asked. "For letting me into the Cathedral Ward?"

"That and entering a restricted area," Alfred replied, moving up alongside him as they walked up the stairs towards the main cathedral entrance. "The only people authorised to enter the Church of the Good Chalice were supposed to be the Vicars and their retinue, along with honoured guests for particular ceremonies. Despite that, I went down to open the passage for you."

"Well… sorry, man. I know how important this job is to you…"

"It really wasn't that important. Now… damn it, she's still praying," Alfred said, having moved in front of him only to stop at the top of the stairs. "You think we should wait for a bit longer?"

Noctis walked up next to him. "Maybe. Hold on, let me hear her prayer," he said, straining to hear the Vicar within whispering.

"Remain wary of the frailty of men. Their wills are weak, minds young. Were it not for fear, death would go unlamented," the Vicar within whispered. "Seek the old blood. Let us pray, let us wish... to partake in communion. Let us partake in communion... and feast upon the old blood. Our thirst for blood satiates us, soothes our fears. Seek the old blood," she continued, seemingly unaware that there were two people outside the main hall waiting for her to finish praying. "But beware the frailty of men. Their wills are weak, minds young. The foul beasts will dangle nectar and lure the meek into the depths. Remain wary of the frailty of men…"

Noctis huffed impatiently. "She's starting over when she reaches the end of the prayer. In other words, it's a constant loop. You know what? Let's just walk in and see what happens. It doesn't look like she's wrapping up anytime soon."

"Okay. You go in first," Alfred relented. "But it's on you if I get fired for this."

"Got it," Noctis said, slowly walking into the cathedral.

His closer proximity to the Vicar and the altar she was praying towards gave him a better idea of what the Church was about. Normally an altar like that would have holy relics or depictions of the saints on it, while other cultures would have offerings of food and drink on it. This one had a beast skull on it.

"Remain wary of the frailty of men," the white-robed Vicar continued praying, still oblivious to Noctis's presence. "Their wills are weak, minds young. Were it not for fear, death would go unlamented…"

"Excuse me? Vicar?" Noctis asked. "Alfred sent me here. May I talk with you for a second? I promise that it won't take too long."

He was about to shake her shoulder when she started to rise, not leaving her knees, but at least looking up. She didn't look at Noctis, though; she had her eyes on her hand, a large circular pendant clasped between them. Her breath started to hitch and wheeze.

"Um, miss? Are you okay?"

Like Gascoigne, it happened very quickly though it had likely been a long time in the making. Her ribs cracked and shot out through her back with the sound of a thousand pencils snapping at once, while her shoulder blades tore through her skin as they grew too large for her human frame. Her body undid itself, and remade itself in the same breath. Her humanity splashed upon the altar.

"Holy fu-" Noctis yelled, backing away from the transforming Vicar. "Alfred, get in here now! The Vicar, she's… oh god…"

The Vicar wasn't like Gascoigne. Maybe it was the amount of blood that she had imbibed throughout her career, or maybe it was just because she was a cleric, but her transformation was much more drastic. She was about the size of the Cleric Beast, if not larger, and her lanky wolf-like frame was wrapped with wispy white fur. A head, with eyes covered with a veil and two antlers attached to the crest of the thing's skull, turned towards him. The beast opened its mouth to roar, and Noctis got a much too good view of the rows of what must have been hundreds of shark-like teeth that adorned its gums.

He could have sworn that the now beastly Vicar's roar sounded eerily like "No", but he was more concerned when the jaws of the beast clamped shut like those of a crocodile. Her hands had turned into lengthened, skeletal facsimiles of their previous form, and the long razor sharp claws on the ends of each finger left visible gouge marks as they scraped along the cobblestone floor.

"I can't get in!" Alfred yelled, and Noctis heard the dull thump of the man's Kirkhammer slamming into a barrier of some sort. He glanced behind him and found that the doorway that he had gone through had been sealed up behind him by a barrier of fog. "What's happening? Talk to me, Noctis!"

"The Vicar's turned, Alfred! She's become a beast!" Noctis yelled back, unsheathing his rapier and pulling his pistol out of its holster. In the back of his mind, the same subconscious voice, the same one that had been there for both the Cleric Beast and for Father Gascoigne, said a name.

 _Vicar Amelia_.

The Vicar… no, _Amelia_ , lunged at him with mouth agape. He only just managed to get out of the way, flash-stepping to the side as the beast skidded along the ground with mouth agape. The Vicar's jaws slammed shut with a thunderous snap, and Noctis used the opportunity to shoot it in the head with his pistol before it got back up. Unlike the Cleric Beast, the Vicar did not have a mask of bone protecting its head. The resulting buckshot thus pulverised the side of its neck with a spray of gore, causing its head to snap to the side from the force of the shot. It scrambled to its feet, before snarling at Noctis.

"How'd you like that, huh?" Noctis asked with false cheer. The Vicar didn't look even the slightest bit affected by the wound in its neck, in fact it only looked angrier. Even Gascoigne's beast form had been more fazed with a point-blank shot from his pistol than it, and Gascoigne was nothing if not resilient.

The beast roared at him almost angrily, swiping at him with those claws that he had noticed earlier. Noctis dodged out of the way with puffs of ash, silently thankful for this relatively newfound ability of his. As he slashed into the back of the Vicar's right leg, he felt a sort of instinctual feeling that he was using the wrong weapon. Sure, his rapier easily cut through the dense muscle and tendons of the leg, but he found himself thinking that a serrated weapon of some sort would be ideal here. The Vicar seemed to have more moves in its repertoire than the Cleric Beast had, most likely because the former was actually symmetrical, evidenced by the fact that it spun around and backhanded Noctis across the room. The force of the hit sent him flying into a column, with which he collided with a sickening crack.

"What the fu-" Noctis began, jamming a blood-filled syringe into his leg before being interrupted by the Vicar grabbing him with both of its hands. It stared at him through its veil for a moment before biting down onto his shoulder and flinging him into the air. Noctis's yell of surprise and pain was cut off when the Vicar caught him mid-air, the snap of its jaws neatly cleaving off his right arm before he was shaken like a dog's chew toy. He was thrown yet again into the air, and his misery was ended when the Vicar's massive jaws clamped down on his back and pulverised his spinal cord.

/-/

Noctis unsteadily sipped his tea. The familiar taste of Earl Grey helped to calm his nerves, but getting bitten in half was still extremely unsettling. Of all the ways to die, Noctis could reasonably argue that that was the worst possible way to go.

"Jeez, what happened?" Lapis asked, easily sliding into the chair next to him with a plate almost overflowing with a smorgasbord of various fruits and berries. "You look like a half-dead zombie, boss. Your pupils don't seem too great as well; looks like they're collapsing or something. Couldn't get any sleep?"

A faint smile broke out on Noctis's face. How did Lapis even pack down that much food? His teammates had fallen into the habit of addressing him as 'boss' after the mission at the docks, starting from Lapis and then spreading to the saner half of his team. He honestly didn't mind, but already other students at Beacon were giving him odd looks due to that.

"Well, getting bitten in half in a dream tends to screw up your sleep. At least I got _some_ sleep; I could hear Professor Goodwitch screaming at the two of you from our room. What the hell were you two doing in the ol' workshop all night anyways?"

"Attaching an APS to my armour. Goodwitch walked in on the two of us wiring an automatic shotgun to a remotely-controlled arm housed on the left shoulder."

"Where the hell did you get an automatic shotgun?"

"Carmine gave it to me," Lapis said casually, chucking a strawberry into her mouth before chewing it with every sign of relish. "She gave up on repairing her pod yesterday since we lost the book, and the shotgun was one of the components lying around."

"I swear, that girl is a walking armory. At least we got the rift-breaker or whatever it's called working again, but I guess now she's just going to strap it to her gauntlet or something."

Lapis gently punched his shoulder, before going back to the apple she had just begun to eat. "Don't give her ideas, please. Sooner or later she's going to be summoning in tanks, and then all we need to do is stand back and let the armour do the work for us."

Noctis looked up from his fugue to take another bite of his bagel. Some might call his appetite or taste somewhat lacking, but a toasted bagel cut in half with cream cheese spread on the cut sides was a simple pleasure of his that was more like comfort food than anything else.

"Oh, is that smoked salmon?" Lapis asked, placing the apple core onto her plate. "The buffet ran out when I managed to reach it."

"Sure, go ahead," Noctis said. He waved his hand, allowing Lapis to nab one of the slices of smoked salmon on his plate with her fork.

"You sure you're eating enough? Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, or so they say."

"Since when were you so concerned about my diet?" Noctis asked, cautiously eyeing the binder that Ruby had placed on the table next to theirs. 'Best Day Ever Activities', read the title that was clearly handwritten with red marker pen.

"Look, I'm just trying to be a good friend. I know that your nightmares are giving you problems; we all knew the moment you woke up crying your eyes out about a girl getting killed by a giant pig," Lapis said, grabbing a handful of various berries before munching on them. "You've got literal fucking bags under your eyes, amigo. Your pupils look like they're collapsing. You ever thought about giving sleeping pills a try?"

"Nope," Noctis mumbled. "Just worried I'll end up finishing the whole bottle in one sitting."

"Tell you what, I'll keep your pills safe with mine. Carmine's helping me lock up my own supply, so if you'd like I could ask her to get some for you as well."

"Well, thanks," Noctis replied, feeling the caffeine in the tea slowly start to take effect. Before long, or so he hoped, he would be back to his normal capacities. Rather concerningly, he overheard Ruby say something along the lines of 'kicking off the semester with a bang', and so he prepared himself to dive under the cover of the table if necessary.

"What's wrong?" Lapis asked him, having heard the characteristic sounds of his metal arm's combat mode engaging. Noctis reached down to his right ankle and groped around for a moment before swearing under his breath.

"I left my baton in the dorm room."

"Why would you need it? There won't be any trouble here, not for now at least."

"I'm… not so sure about that."

"Come on, just relax for a bit. You might as well enjoy the rest of the weekend, boss. Lessons start tomorrow, so why not just kick back, relax and look at the world in a more positive li-" Lapis was interrupted by a pie, of all things, landing on her face. Noctis looked at her, his expression one of abject horror, before Lapis's hand slowly reached upwards to claw the remnants of the pie off of her face. "Okay. Whoever the fuck did that, you're dead. You hear me?" The irate juggernaut ground out angrily.

Noctis glanced in the general direction where the pie had originated from, and found Nora still with her arm in post-throwing position. Suddenly, a watermelon whizzed past his head to impact Nora in the head at a speed Noctis would usually only associate with aircraft.

"Waste of a good watermelon," he heard Lapis mutter sadly.

Noctis got up from his seat and prepared to teleport over to the kitchen area of the cafeteria. A decently large kitchen knife or two should be able to give him a better chance at getting through the now inevitable conflict without any debilitating injuries to his person.

"Food fight!" He heard someone shout. He didn't know who the person was, but he hoped that the person was happy with themselves for unleashing utter chaos. Noctis teleported over to the kitchen area as planned, watching as a pineapple of all things collided with the torso of his ash clone and dispersed it, before he managed to find a suitable knife. The twenty centimeter stainless steel blade he now found himself holding was curved for slicing meat, which meant that it was basically perfect for what he needed it for.

Noctis took a moment to identify key targets, those with inhuman features that forewarned that they would soon be turning into beasts, before taking action. He teleported behind one before drawing the blade of the knife along the target's throat, remembering to compensate for the curvature of the throat as he did.

The next target got his legs swept out from under him before Noctis's inbuilt flamesprayer doused the target with a stream of fire. They were screaming now, an unusually human sound from the beasts he was used to hunting by now. Another one attacked him with its bare knuckles, but it merely got a knee to the gut and a slash across the carotid artery for its trouble.

"Beasts all over the shop…" Noctis growled, frustrated at the sheer incompetence of his fellow Hunters. The entire hall was filled with these half-transformed monstrosities, and Noctis would have assumed that their animalistic features would have marked them for death by now. He had a lot of work to do now, and he didn't even have much in the way of proper equipment. He had none of his usual grenades or firearms with him, so the knife he was holding right now and his flamesprayer would have to do. "You all will join them, sooner or later…"

Weirdly enough, there had been no blood spilt as of yet. The beasts had a field of some sort of energy covering them, but Noctis figured that the field would most likely collapse under enough damage.

"What the hell are you doing?" He heard a girl yell, but when he turned around all he saw was another beast. It appeared human at first glance, with a black bow on top of its head, but Noctis knew better. He raised his flamethrower before letting loose another jet of flame into the beast's face.

"Salvation!" He yelled, dousing the beast with flame. "Don't you see? You've turned on us all, beast! The death of your kind is a necessity!"

It was screaming now, the human voice it had simulated now sounding terrified, but it was all animal noise to him. A stab to the gut and a slash to the neck followed up in short order, before a punch to the face with his metal arm laid the beast out on the floor. Noctis glanced at it for a second, considering whether the beast had any chance of escaping before he could return to finish it off, before leaving it.

There was more screaming now. It was a food fight before he had discovered the beasts hiding amongst men, and now the children quailed at the use of lethal force. It was honestly a joke; they were willing to play war with their food, but they turn tail and flee at the first sign of the real thing rearing its head. There was yelling now too, with people pleading with him to cease and desist.

"What the fuck, Noctis? I thought we were friends!" He heard another girl yell, but this time when he turned to look he gave a sigh of relief. Finally, another Hunter.

"Hello, Djura," Noctis greeted the other Hunter, somewhat confused by the hostility that he was displaying towards him. "Good to see you on a Hunt like this."

Djura stared at him for a moment, his... no, _her_ hair glowing with heat and her eyes glowing red, before sending a wild haymaker at his face. Noctis dodged it, slashing at the inside of Djura's arm with his knife to disarm her.

"Who the fuck is Djura? I'm Yang!" Djura shouted, spinning around for another punch. Noctis teleported behind her and attempted to slit her throat, but again that energy barrier stopped him from doing any real damage.

Off to the side, he heard a more familiar voice holler "Someone get Goodwitch, _now_!" He turned towards the voice, the girl's face holding a glimmer of familiarity to him, but otherwise it was just another beast. No matter. Right now Djura was the main threat. He spun around, delivering a slash to the Hunter's side before stabbing at her heart. Again the energy field stopped him, but Noctis could feel that it was already starting to give.

"Oh, Djura, you always were a bleeding heart," he said, feeling a peculiar upwards tug on the sides of his mouth. When he reached up to check what had happened, he found that his lips had drawn themselves up into a grin. "But a Hunter must Hunt. Surely you have not forgotten your duties?"

Djura only attempted to punch him in response. Noctis sidestepped the left hook, only now noticing that she seemed to be using bird carcasses as gauntlets. Strange. Those simply weren't the style that the Powder Kegs preferred. Perhaps they exploded on contact? No matter. He slashed at her wrist, deliberately cutting parallel to the wrist bones in order to do maximum damage to the radial artery.

"Carmine? Yeah, it's me. Something's wrong with the boss," the bear-eared beast said into some sort of device that it had raised to its human ear. "He's attacking Faunus left, right and centre, and we both know that that's not his style. He's been screaming some nonsense about 'salvation' as well. Also, his eyes look kinda weird. It's like his pupils are collapsed or something… oh shit. Are you sure? A psychotic break? That's… really bad," the one with bear ears trailed off. "What do you mean, secure him until you arrive? He's teleporting like a bat out of hell, and he's already going lethal. Alright, I'll try. Expect casualties, though."

Noctis reared up for another stab at Djura's eye socket before a metal piece of rebar clotheslined him in the gut and sent him flying. The 'food fight' had managed to destroy quite a bit of the surroundings, and even now it was still going strong despite the Hunt going on concurrently. He got up from the ground, already looking for the origin of the flying rebar. The origin was a girl with red hair with her hand outstretched, and there was a niggling voice in the back of Noctis's mind that told him that she was responsible.

"Noctis… are you okay?" The red-haired girl asked. She appeared to be holding a baguette of some sort, presumably due to the food fight that had been happening, and was wielding it rather like how one would wield a sword. While before there was a flicker of familiarity when he saw the one with bear ears, now his subconscious was basically making it obvious to him that he was supposed to who this girl was.

"Please, miss, step aside. Obstructing a Hunt might cause you to get hurt," Noctis replied calmly, flipping the knife in his hand to hold it in a reverse grip. He dodged another punch thrown at him by Djura, before using the resulting opening to slice into her throat. It was a shame that there were no other suitable weapons at hand, but he guessed that he would have to make do with whatever he could get. "As you can see, the situation could become rather dangerous. Please, leave."

"I'm not going to stand aside and watch you hurt innocent people!" The red haired girl suddenly snapped. Noctis systematically swept Djura off her feet before delivering a left hook to her temple. She went down like a sack of bricks and didn't get up again. Noctis reached down and placed a hand on the side of her neck before confirming that she was just unconscious. It would be a waste to finish off someone as experienced as Djura, after all.

"Carmine!" He heard the bear-eared beast shout, somehow hearing it through the screams that had already began to fill the cafeteria. "Get the fuck in here now! People are going to die if you don't!"

Suddenly, Noctis found himself being pelted by a hail of tin cans. Their contents, some sort of sugary liquid, ended up soaking into his garments. He ignored them, teleporting ahead to grab the red-haired girl in a chokehold. Something at the back of his mind was screaming at him for hurting her, but he pushed it aside. She gagged, struggling against the clamp-like strength of the prosthetic hand wrapped around her throat, before Noctis flung her away.

"Innocent people?" He asked rhetorically. "They're beasts, all of them. They are humans no more. They're all flesh-hungry beasts, now."

"Flesh-hungry beasts?" The red-haired girl retorted in disbelief. "Where's the Faunus rights advocate I once knew? Is he still in there, or am I just talking to a shell?"

"Faunus? What are those? No doubt you smell it too, the pungent beastly stench that befouls these beings," Noctis growled. He gestured at the beasts littering the floor, flipping the knife over to his left hand in a reverse grip. He looked the girl in the eye, the latter flinching at his gaze.

"Your eyes… what happened? The pupils look like they've collapsed," the red-haired girl asked, her tone one of concern.

"So they say. I feel just fine, though." Noctis shrugged. "Now, will you get out of my way?"

The girl said nothing. However, she soon managed to return his death stare with one that was not exactly equal in intensity but still managed to convey strength. She wouldn't back down, at least not willingly. He liked that; this girl had iron in her blood. It almost made him regret what he had to do next.

He teleported forward, materialising right in front of the girl before blasting her in the face with a jet of flame. Then, while she was disoriented, he slid in and smoothly delivered a slash to the neck. The reverse grip made it easy to catch her in the throat just as he was passing by, and the additional momentum he had left over was used to reposition himself. The red-haired girl swung her baguette at him like it was an improvised bludgeon, but clearly she was not used to fighting with that kind of weapon. He dodged every swing easily, but the same could not be said for the literal swarm of metal objects that were being used on him now. Drink cans swatted him in the face, while he was forced to shy away from larger pieces of metal debris.

A particularly large and jagged shard of metal raked him across the side, tearing open a gash in his side that started to bleed. It was an unfamiliar sensation, getting injured. He didn't know why, but he had expected _something_ \- armour or something more esoteric in nature - to absorb the damage. Perhaps it was that energy field he kept seeing on his targets. Noctis snarled in pain, his blood-soaked hand scrabbling at his waist before he realised, to his horror, that he had no blood vials with him. His first instinct would be to retreat and regroup, but that wasn't an option now. No, what he had to do was to eliminate the main threat before she could end him for good.

"Ooh, what's that smell... The sweet blood, it sings to me. It's enough to make a man sick, you know?" He snarled, slowly advancing on the girl before him. She looked shocked, somehow. Noctis laughed, a deep and guttural laugh that hurt his throat somewhat.

"What, is this the first time you've drawn blood? With an ability like that, lass, I'm surprised that you react so badly to a little bit of spilt blood," Noctis spat, his teeth grit in a rictus of pain.

"Please, Noctis, stop! I don't want to hurt you! You're my brother!"

Something in the back of his head amplified that plea to an almost unbearable extent, making every single step that much more difficult. Still, a Hunter was nothing if not stubborn. He moved slowly, putting one foot in front of the other, pushing through the psychic backlash that was quite literally trying to push him away from the girl. Eventually, he came out on top. He teleported and materialised just in front of the girl, tackling her to the ground before forcing the blade of the kitchen knife to her throat.

"You lose," Noctis said monotonously. "Too proud to show your true face, eh... But a sporting hunt it was."

He pressed down on the girl's neck with the knife, slowly but surely wearing through that annoying energy field, before his flesh hand was yanked to the side by someone.

"The echoes of blood rage in your veins. Close your eyes, Hunter, lest you be claimed by the nightmare," an unidentified woman near him, presumably the one who had grabbed his hand, said. He felt a strangely familiar warm feeling course through his body, at least before that was overshadowed by the massive headache that suddenly hit him. It felt like his skull was imploding, and a stabbing pain also started to hit both of his eyes. He shut his eyes and grit his teeth through the pain, and eventually the pain dissipated.

He hesitated there for a moment, completely catatonic, before his attention was drawn by the faint sound of sobbing.

He looked down, and promptly dropped the knife in his hand. He vaguely remembered picking it up, but the details were still red and hazy.

"No… no…. w-what the _fuck_ did I do?" Noctis stammered, scrambling back and away from whatever he had been doing. There was a memory. It was cloudy, but he remembered tackling his sister to the ground and slowly forcing the knife through her aura. He looked around, and suddenly the red haze cleared itself from his mind. The scene was horrific; unconscious bodies everywhere and people visibly staring at him with fear.

"Gascoigne's blood echoes overwhelmed you; you went down the same path he did, if only for a moment," Carmine said, crouching down next to him. "As you can see, the path you shared with him brings only pain."

"W-what did I _specifically_ do?" Noctis asked, desperation and panic audibly creeping into his tone. "Any casualties?"

"None," Lapis said matter-of-factly, suddenly appearing behind Carmine. "At most, those you attacked are unconscious or have minor injuries, but I think you've basically finished off our dynamic with team RWBY."

"What?"

"You knocked out Blake and Yang without getting hit even once. I must say that you were dodging like a fucking demon back there, but I… honestly shouldn't be encouraging you right now."

"And... I nearly killed… my own sister…" Noctis stammered. Only now was everything crashing down on him, when what previously seemed to be just animal noise seemingly morphed into human language. They were screams of terror and of agony, as well as pleas for mercy or for help. They all turned into a chorus of horrors that threatened to drown out any logical thought as they melded together into one single choir.

He tried to scramble to his feet, but ended up slipping on a puddle of what looked alarmingly like blood. He crashed back to the ground, his head getting jostled enough to see where Pyrrha was. She had gotten up from the floor, and even now she was sobbing into Jaune's shoulder. Normally Noctis would have had some sort of reaction to that, but he couldn't really find it in him to disturb them. Besides, the sudden pain that surged through his side meant that something more crucial was at hand.

"Whoa, easy there, boss," Lapis said. "Your sister hit you pretty damn hard, so stay down until we get a stretcher or something. I don't know why your aura wasn't working, but you'll definitely need medical attention for _that_."

There was a gash in his side, a chasm of torn skin and flesh that even now bled copiously. So that was what he had slipped on earlier; his own blood. His eyelids were getting heavier now, and it was getting harder and harder to keep them open.

"What happened here?" He heard Professor Goodwitch yell, gesturing at the unconscious bodies on the ground and the still smouldering cafeteria. "I want an explanation and I want it _now_!"

"Professor!" Lapis yelled, waving her hand in the air desperately. "We have a casualty here! He's lost blood, a lot of it, and he looks like he's going into shock!"

Noctis couldn't help but agree. He felt himself grow weaker and weaker by the second, and soon he began wondering exactly which veins and arteries had been severed by that blow.

"Get him into a prone position," Goodwitch instructed curtly, with an edge in her voice that Noctis never knew existed. It wasn't that surprising after all, especially considering that Beacon's professors were Huntsmen first and teachers second. "Does anyone have bandages or gauze or anything like that?" She shouted. There was no response.

Noctis heard the click of Carmine's boot knife, and then he felt warm liquid flow down onto his wound. He strained to look and saw that Carmine had slit her wrist, and even now she was letting her blood trickle down where it was needed. The wound started to itch something fierce, but the bleeding at least lessened somewhat.

"It's alright, boss. You'll live," Lapis patted his shoulder. "I'll tell Icarus that we'll be in the hospital wing, because apparently he got held up by some 'business'."

He started to glow purple, before something he knew to be Professor Goodwitch's semblance lifted him off of the blood-soaked floor and levitated him in the air. He couldn't even find it in him to cry. He'd nearly murdered people he considered to be friends. He'd nearly murdered his own sister. He'd nearly destroyed everything that mattered to him. Was this how Gascoigne felt, when he had played the music box to him? No wonder the man had fallen as far as he did.

Out of the corner of his eye, as he was floated, he saw it again. Eight skeletal, bleached white arms stretched out to various points of the building, while a giant peanut-like head dotted with eyes was pointed in his direction. He turned to look straight at it, and finally he got a good view of what exactly was watching him. Every single eye in that head had rotated in their little pores to look at him, and Noctis felt a shiver go down his spine as they did.

"Oh Amygdala, oh Amygdala... Have mercy on this poor bastard…" He whispered, with the cadence of one repeating what they had heard. He felt himself grow weaker and weaker, probably from the blood loss, and he was getting sleepier by the second. The darkness crept into his field of vision, lulling him into the sweet respite of unconsciousness, and Noctis saw no reason to resist.

He closed his eyes and let the darkness take him.

/-/

The Amygdala watched as the Hunter was carried away by the gravitational anomaly. It had long since grown used to such anomalies, watching as wide-eyed juveniles walked in and changed over just a few years to become hardened soldiers. It simply watched and waited.

Now it seemed that the waiting was nearly over. Just a bit longer and it could drag this last Hunter into the Hunter's Nightmare, to leave him to wallow in blood for the rest of his existence with the rest of his accursed kin. It was not desirable to utilise the grave of Mother Kos as a mere dump for blood-drunk Hunters, but if that was what she truly wanted…

 _Not yet_.

Of course. It could not fling him into the fire just yet. The Vacuous Spider was still alive. The Blood Moon had not yet descended to blur the line between man and beast, to thin the borders that distinguished reality from the Dreamlands.

 _We must wait_.

Yes. It had waited in Yharnam before, watching countless Hunters fall to the Old Blood and transform into increasingly horrible beasts. That game, it had played for eons. What was another few months, less than a year? To the Amygdala, it may as well have been five minutes.

It could wait. It had hung on for so long already, watching and waiting as the humans scurried around beneath it.

 _Just a few more months_.

It silently climbed back up to its usual spot at the highest tower of the Academy, and waited.

 **(Walk a mile in Gascoigne's shoes, and people tend to get hurt. For those who didn't get it, our dear bodyguard here basically became Gascoigne 2.0, if only for a moment. What an auspicious start for V2, eh?)**


	20. Questions of Vengeance

**(The _Alicorn_ \- it's a new addition to Cainhurst's Navy that I sorta-kinda retconned in - is basically the eponymous submarine from Ace Combat 7, the one captained by Captain Matias Torres. Yeah, no regrets here.)**

Winter didn't really know what to expect. Granted, there was basically no prior expectations to be had when first seeing the Alicorn, but flying her personal airship into the hangar was a very unique experience, to say the least.

"Alicorn, this is Sleipnir and her escort," the pilot said into his radio.

"Slepinir, maintain your course," a synthetic voice replied. "An escort will be dispatched."

"But... we already have an escort," Winter's pilot said confusedly, glancing at Rot 1 and Rot 2 flying beside them.

"Very well. Then we shall send one Nidhogg flight unit and it's contingent for overwatch."

"Roger."

The submarine was massive, large enough to count as an aircraft carrier by itself. For some reason some of the starboard CIWS turrets has emerged from their compartments under the submarine's skin, and soon Winter slowly but surely noticed the numerous dual-mounted 30mm six-barrelled rotary auto-cannons pointed at her airship.

There was a hangar on the top deck of the submarine, nothing more than an airstrip, rather like that of an aircraftc carrier, from which aircraft could take off and land. A Nidhogg flight unit shot out of that hangar like a bat out of hell, painted in a rather distinctive livery of a light two-tone grey with yellow wingtips. It sped towards her airship, and Winter saw four smaller fighters painted in another, much more distinctive, aesthetic break formation from behind the Nidhogg to fly ahead of their contigent leader.

"No missile locks so far," Rot 2 remarked. "They aren't hostile, at least."

"Scan those drones asap," Winter instructed her pilot, and sure enough the massive analytical computer setup on her airship was scanning the smaller drones. They honestly weren't that interesting; just smaller twin-engined fighters with similar shapes to their larger Nidhogg cousins, but not as unabashedly curvy with their contours. They were more angular and boxy in comparison but still possessed that signature, virtually universal, brand of sleekness that Cainhurst's fighters possessed.

These fighters sported a distinctive colour palette of a bright yellow body with black highlights and a blue underside, rather like a demonstrator aircraft and yet signalling their inclusion into a specific squadron. Six underwing hardpoints bore two standard missiles on those two nearest to the wingtips, while the inner four held HPAAs - High-Power Air-to-air missiles - otherwise known as the missile equivalent of sneaking up behind someone and hitting them with a chair. Those pulled up on either side of her airship, while the flight unit itself swooped around to level out a fair distance behind her.

"Holy shit," her pilot muttered. "The briefing didn't mention how scary these things are."

The pilot was right, Winter mentally agreed. The Nidhogg at their back was about the same size or slightly larger the Adler of Rot 1 which she was using for comparison, which meant that the sleek fighter was only slightly smaller than Winter's own airship.

She stared into the heavily tinted capsule of armoured glass that served as a cockpit of the flight unit, and chills went down her spine when she found nothing behind the glass except glimpses of some kind of... robot that had been permanently fused to the cockpit via a veritable tangle of wires. And it seemed to be _staring_ at her through the metal visor of its helmet - a helmet rather like those of Atlas's soldiers, that covered the entire head save for the mouth and lower jaw. And was it... smiling at her? Creepy.

Winter watched as the four smaller fighters eventually reestablished a formation of two on either side of her personal airship but underneath them all. They didn't even have mockeries of pilots, instead having a mess of cameras and sensors where a pilot would normally be.

"This is the commanding officer of the Alicorn SAC of the Royal Navy of Cainhurst," a different voice said over the radio. It sounded organic this time, a cultured and professional tone that put Winter at ease. "Is this the diplomatic envoy that General Ironwood told me to expect?"

"Roger," her pilot replied. "This is the personal airship of General Ironwood's second-in-command, who will be posted to the Submersible Aviation Cruiser 'Alicorn' until the Vytal Festival in Vale."

"Very well. You have permission to land, but your escort must RTB as we do not have the capability to accommodate their craft."

"Wilco," Rot 1 said over the radio. "We were supposed to turn back at this point anyways."

"Goodbye for now, then," Winter said, watching as the two elite pilots said their affirmatives before peeling off to fly away in the opposite direction.

The flight unit and drone wingmen went ahead to land, and only while waiting for it was Winter able to fully appreciate just how much firepower was laden onto the submersible vessel in front of her. Numerous SAMs and one of the main guns - a turret encapsulating a single powerful railgun - as well as even more CIWS turrets that were still tracking her airship, and doubtlessly there were even more weapons beneath the skin of the Alicorn. Eventually, though, they were given permission to land.

The Bloody Crow himself was already waiting within, dressed in a crisp suit and tie instead of his military getup. The robotic soldiers flanking him were models different from the normal line infantry, wearing padded fire-retardant suits that had additional armour and some sort of ventilation system built into it.

They were equipped with stocky twin-barrelled heavy combat shotguns, which were currently held in the sort of ease that signaled that their wielders were ready to raise and fire them at a moment's notice. As if that wasn't enough, they had what appeared to be full-sized flamethrowers built into their left arms.

"Greetings, Bloody Crow," Winter began. "I am-"

"Miss Winter Schnee. Yes, mademoiselle, I know who you are," the Bloody Crow replied.

Winter stared at him in shock. He shouldn't have known that; he was notified only to prepare to receive diplomatic personnel. One pilot and one official representative of Atlas. Nothing at all about their identities, not even basic things like gender. She had made sure of that herself, so why did he know her name?

"Your pilot will be brought to his own accommodations," the Bloody Crow continued, gesturing to one of the shock troopers - they could only be shock troopers, what with their heavier armour and shotguns - which moved off to a separate door. It, moving in a surprisingly human way, gestured for the pilot to follow it. The pilot looked to her for guidance.

"It's fine, Morpho. Go with the robot."

The robot gestured again, and this time Morpho made off to follow it. Soon, both he and the robot were gone.

"Now that is out of the way, would you follow me?" The Bloody Crow asked, turning to walk down a corridor of his own. "I shall lead you to your quarters."

"Yes…" Winter muttered, tagging along. She silently fumed behind him. How did he know so much? How does one know so much about the secrets of an organisation that was basically built around secrecy? How did he know what the military was doing even before the military itself knew?

"To answer your question, Miss Schnee, intelligence is a matter of life or death. It would be rather amiss if someone who is presumably a close ally of Atlas did not know what is going on, would it not?"

"But you are not official Atlas military personnel!" Winter shot back, realising that she had accidentally voiced her thoughts. Oh well. In for a penny, in for a pound. "Therefore, you are _unauthorised_ to access potentially sensitive files such as mine!"

The Bloody Crow's hand inched towards the hilt of the sword he had at his side, and only now Winter was able to fully analyse the Bloody Crow's appearance. He was dressed in a crisp black suit and tie with impeccable presentation, while his head adorned with a neat ponytail of white hair that framed what was quite honestly a very handsome face, but he was armed with an ornate katana and those infamous crow wings of his. Behind her, she heard the sound of a shotgun cocking.

Then, he started to laugh.

"Oh, Miss Schnee, I see that your mother's temper still persists even today," he said, coming down from his bout of good cheer. He gestured for the robot guard to lower its shotgun. "You remind me of her."

"You knew my mother?" Winter asked, somewhat taken aback.

"Yes, I did," replied, taking his hand off of his sword's hilt. "Mademoiselle Eileen was my protege, then my personal adversary after our paths in life diverged. I thought that I had ended her life, but it appears that she was as resilient as ever. Tell me, how is she now?"

"Eileen?" Winter asked. "My mother's name is Willow"

"Ah, perhaps I was mistaken then. My apologies."

"It's fine. But... did you know that I was…?"

"Annoyed? I have a teenage daughter. I have had to discern so much from body language alone that I may as well be telepathic by now," the Bloody Crow replied.

"How old is your daughter?"

"Seventeen this year."

"Huh. My sister is seventeen as well. Where is she studying?"

"Beacon Academy," the Bloody Crow said, checking the signs that hung over the corridor. They were written in a language that Winter could neither read nor understand, but, from the fact that the Bloody Crow's robot guard was dragging her luggage behind it and that the Bloody Crow's own body language was getting more relaxed the further they went, Winter could deduce that he was bringing her to her quarters. At least, they would be for the foreseeable future.

"What a coincidence," Winter mulled. "My sister's studying there as well."

"From my correspondence with my daughter, it seems that they are at least acquaintances," the Bloody Crow summarised.

"That's nice. Anyways, do you have a title or name or anything like that? We literally don't have any information about you, nothing about your rank in the chain of command or even how to address you," Winter asked somewhat abashedly. Atlas's military was good at many things, but proper administration and database maintenance was not one of them.

"Is that so? Then call me Commander Corvus."

"Makes sense," Winter replied. The now named Commander Corvus being the only commanding officer would have been a crippling vulnerability, a lack of manpower that would have made it easy to behead the new kingdom's chain of command, if it wasn't true that the Bloody Crow was effectively immortal.

Whatever analysts could discern from security footage, survivors' testimonies, and some more… dubious sources certainly encouraged that assumption. AIReD's more... unscrupulous actions presented a public relations nightmare waiting to happen, but at least the research organisation did the things it had to do well. Testing the biological matter left behind from the Bloody Crow's all too infrequent wounds had been one of the top agendas of the national research institute for a while now.

Hopefully they wouldn't need to dig deeper, dig deep enough to find the man's weakness. Commander Corvus seemed nice enough, but she couldn't help but feel that the gentleman she was following was a facade for something much worse.

"Let me brief you on where you are authorised to go," the Commander began. "You are expressly _not_ allowed to enter the weapons control room, the engine room or the reactor room. You can enter, albeit only with my presence with you, the bridge, the hangar and the armoury. Your weapon's dust cartridges will be kept at the latter location. However, you are free to utilise the recreational room, the common areas and the training arena as you wish. Again, you still need permission to relinquish your dust lest you accidentally damage the innards of the ship with them."

The Commander suddenly stopped his little trot down the corridor, before abruptly turning and opening a door to the side. To be frank, it was more like the door had almost silently slid open for him after Corvus had keyed in a password on a touchscreen to the right of the doorframe. The robot soldier with the shotgun moved to the other side of the doorway before seemingly freezing into attention to stand guard outside the room.

"Your quarters, Miss Schnee. I hope that you shall find them comfortable," Corvus said, a gentle smile reaching his eyes. "Do tell me if you have any problems with your accommodations. We have tried our best to accommodate the wants and needs of a baseline human, but human and Cainhurst physiology have a few differences that might cause some problems…"

At some point Winter had stopped paying attention to him, instead choosing to inspect her new living space.

It seemed to be a compromise between hotel-like luxury and the futuristic utilitarianism that Cainhurst's military seemed to have as an underlying theme. There was a somewhat rectangular hole cut into the wall, providing a way of entering an otherwise enclosed cavity in the side of the room. In that cavity was a comfortable-looking single-sized bed, and upon further examination there was actually a metal panel that could be slid down - a simple test proved that it was able to seal off the entire bed-chamber - for privacy. A bookshelf was built into the wall of the chamber, over where one's head would rest on a pillow.

The room itself had amenities that included a larger bookshelf within easy reach of a study desk, a dining area next to what looked like a hydraulic dumbwaiter with an attached computer terminal, and finally an adjoining bathroom with the necessary facilities. All in all, an ergonomically designed space that was utilitarian yet still comfortably fulfilled its purpose.

"Here is your main room. A bed-chamber, a study and finally a toilet over there," the Bloody Crow aptly summarised for her. "No doubt you have already deduced all that for yourself, but would you like me to explain the specifics?"

"Yes, of course. How do I operate the dumbwaiter?" Winter asked.

"My dear, you certainly have your priorities straight," Corvus said good-naturedly. He seemed more relaxed now, more friendly, but still preserving some shreds of professionalism. "The dumbwaiter's operation is technically straightforward. You can use the terminal next to it to place your order, and for your convenience the computer has already been set to display information in the standard language of Remnant. Once you have placed your order, the ship's kitchens will prepare your food to the highest standards of quality possible before it is delivered via the dumbwaiter."

"What kind of food can the kitchens prepare?"

"Coffee. Tea. Alcohol, including some cocktails. I believe we can prepare baked goods like pastries, muffins and cakes, but I will need to check."

"Anything more substantial?"

"Haute Valean cuisine," Corvus replied, his face completely straight.

"You're kidding."

"I am not."

"Isn't that horrendously expensive?"

"Money does not matter. Cainhurst has no economy to speak of, after all."

"But…"

"Say no more," the Bloody Crow declared, walking to the dumbwaiter. He keyed in his order - Winter couldn't see what exactly he ordered - and began to wait. After a minute or two, a bottle of expensive-looking white wine emerged from the device along with two champagne flutes.

"What is that?" Winter asked hesitantly, watching as Corvus coaxed the cork out of the bottle's mouth with a loud pop. "Champagne?"

"Yes," the enigmatic Commander replied, pouring out one glass for each of them. When he was done, he plucked up his own glass while gesturing for Winter to take her own. "Let us make a toast, to celebrate this diplomatic milestone.

"Hear hear," Winter said, taking up her own glass of champagne. "To the continued alliance of our two kingdoms," she earnestly exclaimed.

"To ourselves, as no-one else is likely to concern themselves with our welfare," the Bloody Crow quipped in response.

Their glasses clinked against each other.

/-/

Solis was honestly rather cold. He was used to Vacuo's stifling desert heat, thus making Vale's temperate climate rather shocking to his system. Even with the trench coat and the suit, he was almost cold enough to start shivering.

At least his cigars were helping with the cold, but he had to have some sort of discretion with them now that the Deputy Headmistress was on his case. His ears were still ringing from the lecture she had given him about the cigars damaging his lungs.

"Man, that's harsh," he heard Neptune say, off to the side. Lung cancer wasn't really on the top of his list of concerns, especially since his choice of lifestyle meant that he would most probably die within a decade barring some sort of miracle.

"I know, we were fighting side by side," Sun elaborated, "She was super fast and I threw a banana at the knight guy, which sounds gross, but…"

"It didn't end well, did it?" Solis suddenly asked, sending a visible jolt of surprise into his two teammates. "You got a fractured skull for your trouble, and the point still stands that she could have killed you."

"Sheesh, don't be such a wet blanket," Neptune replied. "At least Sun has a new friend."

"And the best part? She's a Faunus," Sun replied. "But that's a secret, okay? Between the three of us."

Solis smiled, reaching into his coat before pulling out a notepad and a fountain pen. "Shall we make it official?"

"What's with you and cynicism?" Neptune asked irritably. "Isn't word of mouth enough?"

"Not really. This is important, right?" Solis shot back, directing his question at Sun. His leader nodded in response. "We'll have to play our cards close to our collective chest for this one."

"That's right," Sun declared. "I just don't want to screw this up, you know? The people here are the coolest! No offense to you guys."

"None taken. By the way, what's the lucky girl's name?" Solis asked. "I just realised that you never told us."

"Oh, her name is Blake. Blake Belladonna."

Blake Belladonna. Her name seemed familiar, somewhat. It brought back old memories, memories of liaising and negotiating with the White Fang. There was a girl next to one Adam Taurus that seems familiar as well, a young one with cat ears… oh fuck.

Another student walked past them, this time someone that Solis _easily_ recognised. Daedalus, here in Beacon.

"Motherfucker," he muttered darkly, moving from his spot while discarding the stump of his now used up cigar.

"Where are you going?" Neptune asked, a look of unsettled surprise on his face. No doubt his teammate was getting rather concerned now, but that didn't matter.

"To settle some business. Don't worry, it won't take that long."

He followed Daedalus for a moment before tapping his shoulder.

"Daedalus. I haven't seen you in a while."

For his part, Daedalus seemed able to reign in the surprise that Solis was still able to notice. Solis readied his semblance, preparing to fill the area with metal spikes. A thicket of blades in front of him to shield from any surprises the assassin could have in store, while spikes would come out of the ground aimed to impale feet and sever the Achilles' tendon. That would deplete his aura enough for a coup de grâce, either by a spike though his ribs to puncture both lungs and the heart or by another spike sent almost straight up to impale him from the chin to the crown of his head.

"Who the hell are you?" Daedalus replied. He was clearly acting, though. Solis saw the recognition in his eyes even before the man himself could react to it.

"You know who I am, Daedalus. Don't you remember the Legion, and the Praetorian that leads it?"

"Bullshit. How do I know whether you're telling the truth?" Daedalus retorted.

Solis smirked, before gingerly pulling off his sunglasses. "Now do you believe me?" He asked, internally gloating at Daedalus's look of abject horror as he folded and stowed the sunglasses in his coat.

"I do now. What do you want? Another job?"

"Nope. All I want to do is talk," Solis said. He gestured for the assassin to follow. "Follow me."

/-/

Icarus was, for the first time in a long while, afraid.

The Praetorian was one of the Legion's powerhouses, and for good reason. The man's semblance made him about as powerful in area denial and battlefield control as Lapis was at breaking defences and crushing whatever was in her path, and he was reputed to be a skilled fighter in his own right.

Both of them were unarmed, but the Praetorian's semblance meant that the other man could easily kill him.

He somehow didn't recognise the Legion's leader, but on hindsight it was probably because of the new outfit that he was wearing. The Praetorian's garb had always had a cowboy-styled aesthetic back in Vacuo, so seeing him wearing sunglasses along with a beret and a trench coat was rather jarring.

"Your scroll is ringing," the man in front of him said, gesturing to the pocket of Icarus's pants. Icarus took his scroll out and checked it, reading the message imploring him to meet up with his team at the cafeteria before setting it to silent mode and stowing it.

"Who was that?" The Praetorian asked. "Your teammate?"

"Yes," Icarus replied, continuing to follow the other man. They were currently moving into the academy building, strolling past hordes of students who had taken the lunch break as a chance to enjoy the mountain breeze.

"How's life been treating you, man? Heard you picked up farming in your retirement."

"It's fine," Icarus deflected. "Found a nice plot of land at one of the villages outside the walls and decided to settle there. The soil's good to grow leafy greens, the location's perfect since there's a creek right next to the vegetable garden, and the people there are nice."

"Leafy greens?"

"Cabbages, mostly, but kale and Brussels sprouts also sell well."

They walked deeper into the Academy, until eventually they entered a locker room. No one else was inside.

"But why leave all that to attend Beacon?" The Praetorian asked. "It must have been rather inconvenient to, forgive my pun, uproot yourself and travel hundreds of kilometres to be here."

"Well, I just realised that the country life didn't suit me after all."

"After four whole years? Bullshit!" The Praetorian snapped, gesturing with one hand as he did. Iron spikes erupted out of the ceiling, the floor and even the lockers that lined the walls, all converging on Icarus to effectively immobilise him. The spikes had stopped just shy of skewering him, leaving him literally no space to move without stabbing himself on one of the blades.

"What the fuck do you want?" Icarus snarled, paying close attention to one particular blade that was hovering millimetres from his already watering eyeball.

"To find out why you're here," the Praetorian growled. "Why would one of the best in the business leave a life of relative peace and quiet to join a cohort that, might I add, you are two years older than?"

Icarus considered his answer carefully, considering that the blade at his eye was slowly inching forward as an ad hoc time limit. His mind raced to multiple half-baked lies before he eventually gave up and just decided to tell the truth.

"Did you know that Blake Belladonna is in Beacon?"

"Yes, I found that out for myself just now," the Praetorian muttered. "What's up with that?"

"She deserted." Icarus blurted out. "I'm here to protect her."

"How do I know that you're telling the truth? How do I know that you're not lying to me and that you and Blake aren't sleeper agents?"

"Because I made a promise to myself that I would save her from my fate," Icarus said, confidence creeping into his voice. "We're both monsters, but she isn't. I intend to keep it that way."

"That explains why she was fighting against the White Fang," the Praetorian muttered. The blades shrunk back into where they had come from, seemingly disappearing back into their roots. "Okay. I'll give you my trust for now, Daedalus. Don't break it."

"It's Icarus. I left Daedalus behind a long time ago," Icarus muttered, stretching out a hand in a clear offer of a handshake. Now, it was the Praetorian's turn to look surprised.

"Huh," the Praetorian muttered, regaining his composure. "You got tired of playing the same old game? Go figure."

"I quit when I was ahead," Icarus explained. "My employer was getting a bit cuckoo as well."

"I only wish I could retire. Too bad that it doesn't make any sense to fold when you've got a goddamn Royal Flush in your hands."

"What a shame. Still, where would we be without the Legion?" Icarus asked rhetorically. "From what I've seen the White Fang become? Anarchy."

"Well, that too. Sorry for us getting off on the wrong foot, man. I thought that the Academy had been compromised."

"You're a couple of weeks too late, my friend. Lapis already cracked that nut last term."

"...are we thinking of the same Lapis?" The Praetorian asked hesitantly. Icarus couldn't help but smile. Here he was, the larger-than-life leader of the Legion himself, and he was scared of his girlfriend. Hell truly hath no fury like a woman… well, like a woman. Lapis hadn't been scorned, which explained why the man in front of him was still alive to tell the tale.

"Yes. The exact same one. And you are?"

"Solis. Has Lapis told you about me yet?"

"She's told me too much," Icarus deadpanned. "I probably know more about your sex life than you do."

"Shit…" The now named Solis stammered. "Did she tell you about…"

"The time both of you got hammered and fucked each other senseless later that night? Yeah. All that and more."

Solis covered his face with his hands and made a soft, distressed-sounding whimper.

"It's okay, man," Icarus muttered, patting the poor man on the shoulder. "At least I finally meet the groom."

Solis didn't respond, instead uncovering his face and giving Icarus the dirtiest look that he had ever seen.

"On the bright side, you're probably fucked when you meet her. Not like that's a bad thing after all," Icarus joked, deciding to twist the knife. "I'll make sure to clear out the room for you two."

"Fuck you, man. Fuck you."

"Say that to Lapis."

Solis punched him in the arm. Oh well, Icarus thought, that's one way to make a new friend. Hopefully the next one wouldn't be as stressful.

Icarus's scroll ringed again, this time with a call instead of a message. He picked it up.

"Where the hell were you?" Lapis yelled.

"Taking care of business with the Praetorian," Icarus replied confusedly. "He sort of just pulled me aside to interrogate me."

"Then you can tell him to fuck right off! We could have _used_ your fucking help just now when the boss went berserk!"

"What?"

"Yeah, thought so. He's been cracking for months, and today seems to be the day that his mind just gave up the ghost."

"How badly did he break?" Icarus asked, all traces of good cheer gone completely.

"Psychotic break and temporary insanity kind of bad," Lapis stressed. "He started randomly attacking Faunus when a food fight broke out, and we all know that the boss isn't the kind of person to do that."

"A food fight? What the hell happened? I was gone for only a hour."

"Things tend to happen fast in this school. Anyway, the boss somehow got hold of a chef's knife and started going ham with it. Blake and Yang tried to intervene but they got stomped. Pyrrha tried to intervene and Noctis almost killed her."

"Any casualties?"

"All the others only got minor injuries. The boss got the worst of it - metal shrapnel in the side that's done one hell of a job on his intestines."

"Where are you now?"

"Medical wing. The boss is under a medically induced coma, so take your fucking time. The surgery's already over and done with."

"What should I expect?"

"A very pissed off teammate and a leader who needs to have someone with him twenty-four seven. Him nearly killing Pyrrha probably fucked his mental state up something fierce, so watch over him to make sure that he doesn't try to off himself or anything like that."

"Anything else I need to know?"

"Oh, one more thing. Goodwitch has effectively given him a two week long forced break," Lapis groused. Icarus could almost hear the non-verbal sigh of resignation in her voice. "No combat, no tinkering with his weapons, no _access_ to his weapons, nothing that has anything to do with violence until his mental state improves. I'll need your help - and Carmine's - to enforce it."

"You _know_ how hard it is to stop him," Icarus tried to reason. "He _sleepwalks_ to his workshop sometimes. I've seen him tuning his weapons at three in the morning sometimes."

"That's why I need your help. Now get your ass over here, and drag along the other dumb fuck if you need to."

"Roger. See you there," Icarus replied, before ending the call. He kept his scroll in his pocket, before turning to leave.

"What happened?" Solis asked, moving to follow him as the assassin broke out in a sprint in the direction of the medical wing.

"I'll explain to you later," Icarus stayed bluntly. "All you need to know is to watch your mouth when we reach there."

Solis nodded.

/-/

Noctis was having problems with ending the former Vicar. That much, he knew. The two dozen or so times he'd been killed by her attested to that. It wasn't that she couldn't be hurt, definitely not, but it was just that she didn't work like other beasts.

She wasn't unbalanced or lopsided like, say, the Cleric Beast, so when she overextended Noctis couldn't punish her for that. She couldn't be staggered, not even by a firearm point blank to the face. His rapier has neither the heft needed to break her, nor the range required for him to be able to keep his distance and whittle her down.

No matter. That just gave him an excuse to search for survivors in Central Yharnam. He had returned a while ago to the clinic, to the place where he had first emerged into this accursed city.

"Hello again, Doctor," Noctis had called out, knocking on the still shut door. "By any chance, did you find any survivors? I've found a safe place for them to take shelter until the Hunt is over."

"Oh, well, hello…" Iosefka replied. She had sounded different somehow, but Noctis assumed at first that the change was because of stress. "Sorry, no luck on my part. But since you're here, let me ask you a small kindness. You're soon off to hunt, I presume?"

"Not really, no," Noctis said. He shrugged. "There's been a bit of a lull in the action, and I'm taking the chance to get everyone to safety while I can."

"That's nice of you, but… if you find any survivors, tell them to seek this place. Upon my Hippocratic oath, if they are yet human, I will look after them… perhaps even cure them."

"Very well, but you see, there's incense in the Chapel and it's in the Cathedral Ward, so it's probably safer…"

"This sickness, these beasts, they are not to be feared," Iosefka had cut in. "This time the night is long. I may be trapped here, but I should do something to help. I'll even offer a reward for your cooperation. Tempted?"

Noctis hesitated, if only for a moment. This wasn't Iosefka, he was sure of it. The way they spoke; their tones, their mannerisms and even their accents, they were entirely different. No matter. He would rather send survivors to Oedon Chapel anyways; he trusted the Chapel Dweller as a friend if nothing else while he only trusted this impostor as far as he could throw her.

"Okay. I'll work with you."

"Excellent. Well, off you go, then. If you find anyone who's still human, send them straight to Iosefka's Clinic. You can assure them, there's no place safer."

No place safer than in the arms of a crackpot doctor? Considering the state of the city itself, she might actually be correct. Of course, that was true only if Oedon Chapel didn't exist.

"Very well, good doctor," Noctis waved back, already walking off. "I shall find you some patients soon enough."

He had walked through the front gates already of the opinion that nothing good had ever, or would ever, come out of the clinic behind him.

There were, surprisingly enough, still some sane survivors hidden throughout the city. Some were easy enough to persuade; a nice young lady by the name of Arianna. She had, rather astutely, identified him as a Hunter and asked him whether he knew of a safe place. He told her of Oedon Chapel, and had lingered behind to keep watch as she packed her things.

There was an old woman, angry at the entire situation but still rational enough to give him the time of day. She was just pissed off in general, so Noctis gave her a decent enough berth. He directed her to Oedon Chapel, before leaving her to her own devices.

He had told Gilbert about the Chapel. The man had tried to stop him, citing the fact that he was wheelchair-bound, but Noctis had already decided what to do. He had forcibly entered Gilbert's house - a mistake, in retrospect, as such an action was technically a home invasion - and had carefully wheeled the older man to Oedon Chapel. Noctis had reasoned with the former Hunter that it was only a temporary move, and that he would return him to his own home once the Hunt was over. Gilbert had relented, agreeing to stay in the relative safe haven for the time being.

There was one exception, though. A man spouting xenophobic, half-baked, arguments and opinions. He had informed the man of Oedon Chapel, and he didn't seem to believe Noctis at all. It wasn't that he disagreed with him, not at all, it was just that he didn't trust an _outsider_ to leave him to safety. Noctis watched him walk off, presumably in the direction of the Chapel, before he suddenly turned around into the direction of Iosefka's clinic. He couldn't find it in him to intervene.

Eileen laughed softly, before a smile reached her eyes. "Looks like I was wrong then."

"Damn right you are," Noctis replied cheerfully. "There were still sane people after all."

They had broken into an abandoned tea house - and it seemed like the only one in the city - that was still inexplicably well stocked. He had managed to prepare a kettle of black Ceylon tea and light a stove with some wood he'd scavenged off of the dead. Gascoigne's house had better facilities and provisions, but he wasn't willing to defile that place further. Rose's dying screams still rang in his ears, no matter how faint they were.

The female Hunter shook her head, taking a bite of her scone as she did. He had found them in the back, seemingly freshly baked in the very afternoon before this horrible night. They were still nice and moist, even despite the cold and dry climate. Sadly, there was no jam and clotted cream to go with said scones.

"I like the gesture and all, but that's not really the reason why I wanted to meet you."

"I can tell. I just thought that you'd be able to get your point across better with a nice cup of tea and a lack of inhuman giants trying to kill us," Noctis gestured to their relatively peaceful surroundings. Still, even the strong aroma of the tea wasn't enough to fully drown out the foul odour of burning beast flesh. "Much better than the Cathedral Ward, don't you agree?"

"How astute of you," Eileen replied cheerfully, before her expression suddenly darkened. "But, one thing. I must warn you not to go near the tomb below Oedon Chapel in the Cathedral Ward. Henryk, an old hunter, has gone mad. And he's my mark."

"Henryk?"

"Gascoigne's father-in-law, and the man's mentor. He's old, very old for a Hunter," Eileen shrugged. "Our line of work tends to leave reaching a ripe old age as a near impossibility."

"Ah. He's probably looking for me, then," Noctis deduced grimly. "Stay behind. This is my mess to clean up."

"Your mess?" Eileen asked. "You must've killed Gascoigne as well, then?"

"Yes… not my proudest moment."

"He was falling apart. I'm sure it had to be done."

"Yes."

"But despite all that, please do try to keep your hands clean. You're rather too young and naïve for this line of work, and hunting Hunters will only bring you closer to the edge of madness. Forgive me for asking, but how old are you?"

"Seventeen this year."

"Far too young," Eileen sighed. "It only goes to say a lot about this city that the next generation has to go out and fight the beasts scrabbling in the darkness while the current one hides in the safety of their homes. A hunter should hunt beasts. Leave the hunting of hunters to me."

Noctis finished off his scone. The last of the tea followed soon after. "I'm afraid I can't do that, Eileen. I'm the reason he's here in Yharnam; I killed his partner. I'm the reason he's gone mad; I've failed his entire family and caused their deaths albeit indirectly," He said evenly, standing up from the table. "This has been nice and all, but… don't I need to clean up after myself?"

He had a feeling in his gut. Granted, he probably shouldn't have even bothered to listen to it considering that he was led to some sort of occult tomb the last time he trusted it, but this time it could not be ignored. Eileen would die if she went on to fight Henryk alone, Noctis just knew it.

Eileen said nothing as he left, only looking at him with a nondescript yet scrutinising gaze.

/-/

Noctis stalked into the graveyard, weapons already drawn. It was dark as usual, meaning that if anyone else was there with him he probably wouldn't find out until it was too late, if not for the fact that Henryk was already in front of him.

"Is this your hat?" Henryk asked genially, holding up a withered tricorne in his left hand. It was the very same hat that Noctis had left next to Gascoigne's deathplace. In his right hand was a massive mockery of a medical saw, a block of with serrated teeth and filthy bandages attached by a hinge to a curved handle also wrapped with bandages. His pistol - similar to Noctis's own, but with some fundamental differences in design - was holstered at his side.

"Why does that matter to you?" Noctis retorted, defensiveness creeping into his tone despite his best efforts. "I'm a Hunter, same as you, stuck on this clusterfuck of a Hunt."

"You've heard of me, then, to know me as a Hunter?" Henryk replied. His attire was clearly that of a Hunter, all longcoat and leather cape, but this time the otherwise ubiquitous black was replaced by washed-out yellow and gold filigree. A leather tricorne cap was decorated with a few feathers of unknown origin. All in all, a rather unique fashion statement. "And surely you've heard of my partner?"

"Your partner?" Noctis bluffed, hoping to play the fool. "Never heard of him."

"Nice try, boy. I've met your ilk before, you know? First Djura, then Eileen, and now you," Henryk declared, jabbing a finger at him from the tight grip of his saw. "You smell of moonlight and blood and something else that I just can't describe. Djura cleansed Old Yharnam of the plague, burning it to cinders. Eileen brought this city back from the brink, weeding out those who had fallen to madness. You…"

"What?" Noctis shot back.

"You're not done yet, not by a long shot. All you've done is kill a path through the city for yourself. I can't stop you, I know that," Henryk muttered and gestured, the feathers on his cap quivering as he did. "I watched Djura fall to the beasts over and over again, what must have been more than a hundred times, and every single time he would come back and avenge himself. I saw Eileen get crushed by a massive beast's fist, smeared to paste on the cobblestones, and five minutes later she came back swinging those daggers of hers. You're probably made of that same undying mettle as the rest of them."

"Anything else? Why not just surrender, then? You clearly haven't gone mad."

"Oh, I have. You have as well. That's my partner's hat you're wearing. A trophy of war?"

"Well, I saw it lying around and decided that it fit me better than that old thing you're holding."

Henryk's smile reached his eyes behind his mask, and Noctis just knew that it wasn't a nice smile. "It still smells of beasts, you know? How have I noticed it, but you haven't?"

"Maybe I've just gotten used to the smell."

"Used to it? Hah!" Henryk barked. "I've been in this business for _forty_ years, boy, and the musk of beasts is something that I've never gotten used to," he said. His weapon unfolded, and Noctis realised that the inside-facing part of the sawblade was actually sharpened to a frightening degree for use as a massive cleaver blade. "But killing? The more you do it, the easier it gets. Now it's as easy as breathing."

"You don't have to do this, Henryk," Noctis warned, raising his rapier in a defensive combat stance. "I had to. Gascoigne was gone when I found him, and I only dispatched the beast that remained."

"Isn't that what I'm doing as well? You might walk and talk, and you might even be speaking reason, but you're still a beast. All of us are. But my daughter wasn't."

"Your daughter?"

"Viola. You probably know her name, since you have both her music box _and_ her locket. Did you kill her too, or did Gascoigne lose it completely?"

"It was Gascoigne. Your granddaughter gave me the music box, asked me to deliver it to your daughter, but I was too late."

"And my granddaughter?" Henryk asked quietly, moving within melee range of Noctis. Noctis himself couldn't help but notice that the older man's eyes were bloodshot. "What happened to her?"

Noctis didn't respond.

"What happened to her?" Henryk suddenly yelled, throwing aside the hat. "Tell me!"

Noctis kept silent.

"...How did she die?" Henryk asked quietly, his tone full of sorrow. "She was so young…"

"I was trying to take her to safety, to a chapel in the Cathedral Ward," Noctis somberly explained. "The whole place was covered by incense, and she would have been perfectly safe there, but on the way… I lost her."

Henryk paused, drawing out the silence before he finally spoke again. "You know, I would have liked you if you hadn't made me lose everything," he grit out, what was visible of his face contorting into a rictus of tightly controlled rage. "You failed to save my daughter. You killed a man who might as well have been an adoptive son of mine, and then you _looted_ my daughter's corpse. Finally, you lost my granddaughter and let her die alone in the sewers of the city. Is that correct?"

"...Yes."

Henryk burst out laughing, before his laughter died out with a croak from a constricted throat. "I'd say that this isn't personal, but I won't because I'm a man of my word," he snarled, beating his chest with his free hand. "I know this won't stick, but… go to hell, you fucking bastard!"

Henryk brought his cleaver down, and Noctis rolled out of the way of the blow. The younger man activated his flash-stepping - Quickening, Eileen called it - and Noctis feinted with a thrust before diving and reappearing behind Henryk. He would have gotten a hit in if the other man hadn't immediately spun around and tried to cut him in half.

"Quickening, I see? You won't be doing that again, not under my watch."

The blow didn't connect, but Noctis was only able to get out of the way barely. Not for the first time, he was thankful for the lack of the kind of bulky composite armour that he normally wore. It could probably tank bullets and lighter blows easily, but the added protection wasn't worth the impediment to mobility that would leave him vulnerable to heavy blows that would get past the armour anyways. Not to say that the armour wasn't useful, but fighting without aura or a semblance tended to make fights based on mobility instead of durability or the amount of damage one could deal out in a given span of time.

Noctis tried to slash at Henryk's neck, but the older Hunter just moved backwards and out of the range of the swift blow. The older man had the range advantage here with his massive cleaver, but Noctis couldn't find a way to get in close. He transformed his rapier, aiming a shot at Henryk's gut, but Henryk - somehow having drawn his pistol somewhere in the battle - shot and hit his rapier mid-transformation. It jammed, and Noctis was only able to revert his weapon back into its melee-only form before it locked up entirely.

"That was a rather Parthian move," Henryk commented blithely, transforming his cleaver back into its saw form. "Too bad it didn't work."

Noctis cracked his neck. "And too bad I'm only getting started," he replied sharply. Then, he lunged again. His rapier was caught in the teeth of the saw, allowing Henryk to pull his blow aside before the older man kicked him in the gut. Noctis had been hit in the stomach before with blunt impacts, but this one was by far the hardest he had ever felt. It was more like an industrial piston than a leg, and Noctis backed away wheezing from the hit.

"You're only a boy. Too young for this kind of work," Henryk grunted. "You're cocky, fresh from victories shadowed by probably hundreds of deaths. I'll kill you again and again, you know? We could keep this up for centuries, every single hour of every single day of eternity until it finally sticks or you break. Either one is fine with me."

Noctis only brought up his flamesprayer, raising it to blast Henryk with a pressurised stream of burning aerosoled fuel before it was shot out of his hand. It clattered to the side, before two more shots hit it in quick succession. Each bullet left a massive dent in the fuel canister of the weapon as it hit, and Noctis found himself being thrown to the side from the weapon exploding from the force of a final bullet. There was a massive fireball, one that set Gascoigne's purloined hat alight. Noctis threw it off just as it burned away to ash.

"Two bullets with one stone, huh? Got your flamesprayer and that stupid fucking hat in one fell swoop," Henryk mocked, false cheer in his voice. "What else will you lose today?"

Noctis got up. "You fucking cunt! Gilbert gave that to me!" He roared, lunging at Henryk again. This thrust would have landed if the other Hunter hadn't somehow stepped down on his moving weapon and quite literally stomped his attack to the ground. Noctis stumbled.

"I will make your life hell, lad," Henryk snarled. "You killed everyone I ever loved, and I will make you pay if it's the last thing I do!"

Noctis tried to move behind Henryk again, but when he materialised all he got was the other man's saw tearing into his side. Gascoigne has more sheer strength than his mentor, but Henryk made up for his comparative weakness with experience and skill. The man was toying with him, Noctis could tell that much.

"I could do this all da-fuck!" Henryk growled in pain, the spray of buckshot tearing into his gut. Noctis honestly thought that that would spell the end of the fight before Henryk pulled out a blood vial and used it, the injection causing the wound to close up and heal before his very eyes. "Nice try, but you're not getting away that easily."

The saw unfolded again, and this time the cleaver blade swiftly cut Noctis's left hand off. There was a spray of blood as both hand and gun flew away in an arc, and Henryk's heel swiftly came down upon the latter. Fragments of the gun's firing mechanism and frame flew out from under the man's boot, and soon enough all that was left were shattered pieces of wood and metal which were being ground into the cobblestones below.

"That was Gascoigne's gun, you know that?" Noctis asked, grinning savagely.

"I know," Henryk shrugged, transforming his weapon back into its folded saw form. "But all's fair in war, after all."

"You're mad. I see it now," Noctis replied, getting back up. A downward slash was deflected again by the teeth of the saw, and punishment came swiftly afterwards by a kick to the gonads that doubled him over. Henryk deftly dodged two wild diagonal downwards swings before he yet again stomped down on another thrust.

This time, he stomped down again and shattered the blade. Noctis was left with a hilt and a broken blade, which was promptly dropped.

"Maybe we're both mad. You're lashing out like a cornered dog, and all I need to do now is to put you down," Henryk said, unfolding his cleaver yet again. "Don't worry, I'll make this quick. Can't have you running around like a headless chicken, after all."

Suddenly, Henryk stumbled forwards. Blood spurted from a deep cut in his back next to his spine, and he swore as a familiar figure with a tattered cape slipped past his shocked swing.

"Catch!" The figure yelled, tossing him what appeared to be a rigid bladed cane. He hefted the cane-sword, because that was the only thing that the walking stick-like weapon in his hand could be. He got up, slashing at Henryk's exposed neck. Now that the older man was distracted, the blow finally landed. The now severed carotid artery sprayed blood all over the gravestones, and he lost his footing again for a moment from the shock of blood loss before the figure stabbed him in the back. Noctis hacked at Henryk's left arm, causing him to drop the blood-filled syringe in his hand.

"Intoxicated by the hunt, drenched in the blood of beasts…" The figure's all too familiar voice said. Suddenly the tattered cape and the bird mask that Noctis only recognised now sank in. "What a sorry state you're in. I will be merciful, on my hunter's honor…"

"Eileen," Henryk sneered, backing off from the fray. "We meet again. Looks like you're picking up after this stray of yours."

Eileen sighed. "He isn't supposed to be here."

"What a surprise," the old Hunter drawled. "Indeed, he shouldn't have come here. Only death waits in this place."

Noctis flipped the cane-sword in his hand, triggering the mechanism on the handle of the sword. The individual blades forming the rigid blade of the cane flipped out, unlocking to form a bladed whip. Said bladed whip lashed out at Henryk, cutting his right arm down to the bone. He roared in agony, but to his credit the older man kept a firm grip on his weapon.

Even that was lost when what Eileen pressed what appeared to be some kind of injector gun to his back, and whatever poison that she had injected caused his hand to spasm and drop the weapon. Involuntary convulsions caused Henryk to collapse against a gravestone, and as he finally fell he was rocked with seizures. When the writhing stopped, Henryk's body had stopped moving.

"That was a neurotoxin, the same kind that coats those poisoned knives I gave you. It's potent against humans, not so much against beasts. Luckily for us, Henryk seemed to be in the former category."

"Lucky for us..." Noctis muttered.

"You ignored my warning... you fought Henryk and made it back alive, albeit barely. Not bad at all," Eileen quipped.

Noctis sighed, scrutinising the seemingly dead Hunter on the ground. Just to be sure, he slammed the bladed whip onto the ground to lock the baldes back into their cane form before he stabbed Henryk's body once more in the heart. The man didn't respond.

"'Not bad at all'? He was going to kill me, Eileen."

"The fact that you survived long enough for me to intervene already speaks volumes about your skill," Eileen gently replied. "You have potential, potential that I would like very much to see develop."

Noctis walked over to pick up his severed hand, pressing the stump of the hand to where it had been cut off from the wrist before gesturing to his belt. "If you wouldn't mind, I kinda need help."

Eileen deftly plucked off a blood vial, removing the empty poison vial from her jet injector and loading the blood vial before jamming it into Noctis's thigh. Noctis winced, both from the pain of the jet of fluid piercing his skin and from the unusual sensation of his hand reattaching itself to his body. He flexed the reattached hand's fingers, checking that they were still as flexible as usual before being satisfied enough with the reconnection to let it rest.

"Well, shit," Noctis muttered, sheathing the cane into the sheath of his late rapier. The cane fit perfectly. "There goes my arsenal. No more guns for me, I guess."

"Oh, this was your gun?" Eileen asked, pointing at the starburst of metal and wood off to the side. "It's well and truly gone, it seems. But do not worry, for instead of a pistol you now have another one."

"Another pistol?"

"Yes, this pistol," Eileen replied, pressing what appeared to be a battered service revolver into his hands. It was a solid firearm, a top-break weapon which was chambered in .455 Webley. An old calibre, dating to even before the Great War in Remnant, but still very deadly. It was also holstered, with straps that let the quick-draw holster stay fastened to his hip. "This was the service weapon of one of Yharnam's bobbies. Fortunately for you, tonight's Hunt had 'relieved' that particular policeman of his duties. Now it's yours."

Noctis turned it over in his hands, securing the holster to his side before taking it out and inspecting the slightly rusted surface of the gun. The gun certainly wasn't fresh off the assembly lines, but it would definitely serve well for a Hunt. He holstered the gun again, this time for good.

"You may keep the jet injector as well. It really isn't mine, after all - I appropriated it from an abandoned clinic," Eileen said, passing him the injector as well. Noctis took it with no lack of caution, warily looking at the little blotches of dried... stuff dotting the metal surface of it. He'd have to clean it later, or at least render it sterile with boiling water.

"Thanks, Eileen. Really, thanks for the gi-what?" Noctis asked, surprise breaking out with a vengeance. Eileen was currently taking out something else.

"Oh, take this as well," she jokingly shot back, chucking a top hat at Noctis. "You lost your hat, right?"

"Yep. Again, thanks," he replied, securing the hat on his head. He adjusted the top hat to a suitable jaunty angle, before turning back to Eileen. "My dear madamoiselle, do you perchance have a spare monocle on your person? I wish to suitably complete this newfound aesthetic."

Eileen placed her hand on her mask-covered forehead. "You do realise that that stereotype has been done to death, right?" She asked exasperatedly.

Noctis chuckled.

/-/

Carmine was currently being inconvenienced. Ruby was currently pulling her along at a speed that would normally be impossible for a human frame, and indeed her tendons and ligatures were already suffering significant strain from having to resist the considerable air resistance her unarmoured body was currently experiencing.

"Seriously, what do you want?" Carmine asked irritatedly. "What is so sudden that you had to distract me from my homework?"

"It's with Noctis's locker, you know, the one that we're supposed to monitor in case he tries to get his stuff back early," Ruby said hurriedly. "Weiss checked his stuff just now and all of it has changed."

"What?"

"Yeah. Everything's different," she continued. "Things have been replaced with other things, or they've disappeared altogether. You know him more than me, so you'll probably be able to have the final say. Here we are."

They suddenly stopped. Carmine's legs dislocated from the sudden deceleration from the almost supersonic speed they had been travelling at, and she swore under her breath as she popped them back into their sockets. "Let me see," she muttered, prying open Noctis's rocket locker.

The locker itself was about as utilitarian as expected of Noctis. Most of Carmine's peers had posters and pinups of varying decency; Lapis's locker door for example was plastered with Legion propaganda posters, while Yang's had one of a pin-up girl taking pride of place inside. Carmine had seen Noctis's locker before, covered with select pages taken from manuals for weapon maintenance and repair. Even those were different now.

"To give credit where it is due, you are right. Even the posters on the door are different," Carmine admitted, causing Ruby to puff up with pride somewhat. "Now, for the actual equipment..."

Carmine inspected Noctis's combat outfit first. The helmet and rebreather were gone, while the greatcoat had somehow been upgraded - it was now made out of leather instead of the chemical-soaked wool that she was used to. The carapace armour had been modified as well, becoming a more compact cuirass meant to fit under the greatcoat but over the black officer's uniform that replaced the military fatigues that used to be there.

There was also an armoured gauntlet of some kind, probably meant to go over the right sleeve and protect the forearm of the wearer. There was a retractable detonator - basically a little tubular plastic switch with a bright red button for one's thumb to press - connected to it, which was probably connected to the numerous stacks of bricks of plastic explosives connected to remote detonators behind it. Most notably, the detonator gauntlet seemed to be fitted for a right hand.

"That's… quite a lot of explosives," Carmine muttered, shifting her body to block Ruby's view of the literal stack of explosive bricks before going back to inspecting the locker's contents.

"What does all this mean?" Carmine asked, pointing at the outfit.

Ruby didn't respond.

"Could you answer my question?"

Ruby sighed. "This uniform... Atlesian Gestapo. This is an officer's field uniform, a cold weather one to be precise. It's just that they've done really, _really_ twisted things during the Great War. They're a holdover from the era when Atlas was called Mantle, and, even though the Atlesian Gestapo says that they're not the same organisation as the Mantlean Gestapo was back then, it's still hard to trust an organisation that killed thousands upon thousands of people... Faunus in particular, but people nonetheless."

Carmine made a sound of assent before moving on to the weapons. The laser rifle had been replaced with some sort of submachine gun - equipped with a red-dot sight, a forwards vertical grip wired to a tactical light, and finally with a muzzle brake and pairs of magazines clipped to each other to form a single 'jungle' configuration magazine - that Carmine pulled out for Ruby to inspect, while next to that was a sheathed stiletto dagger along with boxes of ammunition.

"What is this?" Carmine asked, handing over the guns.

"These?" Ruby asked, clearly thankful for the opportunity to change the subject. "The submachine gun is a modernised MP5A5 - it has a trigger group with a three-round burst option - that has also been rebuilt from the ground up to reliably take overpressure rounds. The Picatinny rails here have been added more recently since the gun itself didn't come out of the factory with those, and the custom mods kind of makes me more correct. The maximum range is about a hundred metres, but within those hundred metres this thing is accurate and controllable even in full-auto. Closing the distance shouldn't be a problem since Noctis can teleport, and lethality shouldn't be a problem as well with proper shot placement."

Carmine sighed. "I guess this is what I get for going with the resident gun appraiser."

"Umm... maybe," Ruby replied, putting the submachine gun back into the locker. "The other boxes of ammunition we have here are two variants of 9x19mm Parabellum, one is standard overpressure hollow-points and the other looks like 7N31 AP rounds - it's a less common variant designed to pierce soft body armour."

"How do the armour piercing rounds work? I assumed that pistol rounds were implicitly unable to defeat body armour in the first place."

"Oh! That's a fun question to answer. The 7N31 bullet features a hardened subcalibre steel penetrator core enclosed by a bimetal jacket. The space between the core and jacket is filled with polyethylene, and the tip of the penetrator, here, is exposed at the front of the bullet to achieve better penetration. The penetration range for body armour is specified to be around forty metres and tests have indicated that it can pierce an eight millimetre thick steel plate at ten metres, which definitely isn't bad for a _pistol round_."

"So they have a sabot?"

"Yeah. The method of construction of the round means that they'd work against both armoured and unarmoured targets, if that makes sense? If it hits an unarmoured target, the entire bullet holds together to produce a wide wound channel kinda like conventional ball ammunition. If it strikes an armoured target, however, the sleeve is stripped away and the core penetrates alone."

"Ah, I see..."

"The main disadvantage of a round like this, though, is that high impact velocities are required for them to work effectively. So the bullets have to be relatively light to maximise their muzzle velocity. This means that they lose velocity pretty quickly, which limits their effective range to... maybe fifty metres?"

"Is this a hobby of yours? Staring at ammunition and waxing lyrical about them?" Carmine asked impatiently, causing the other girl to suddenly turn toward her in mild affront.

"No? I just like looking at how other people's weapons work, that's all..." Ruby replied evenly, though she narrowed her eyes slightly.

"I see. How about the other things here, please?" Carmine asked again, now violently gesturing at the rest of the locker's contents.

"The knife we have here is a Fairbairn-Sykes, an excellent design for cutting arteries and the like but overall nothing out of the ordinary. The other type of ammunition we have here is standard .45 ACP hollow-point, and that's it."

"Glad to see that we have the opinion of an expert here," Carmine remarked evenly.

"You're welcome," Ruby said, before her scroll started ringing. She picked it up, listening to it for a while before passing it to Carmine. "It's for you."

"Thanks," Carmine replied. "Who is this?"

"Yang."

"State the purpose of your call."

"Jeez, loosen up. Anyways, your leader is up. He's confused as fuck and probably needs to be brought up to speed. Also, he has essentially an entire toolkit and a pistol in his arm now."

"Toolkit?" Carmine asked incredulously. "What are you talking about?"

"A smatchet, a blowtorch, the whole shebang. It's fine though, we just ended up messing around with them. The pistol wasn't loaded, but it had a suppressor already slapped onto the muzzle, and the tools were surprising but otherwise ordinary. They just sort of appeared inside his arm, and I think that Noctis didn't know about them considering his reaction, but at least it's better than that goddamn flamethrower he had last time."

"Was he not in his room at any possible time?" Carmine asked. "Did any of you break your shifts? I know for a fact that we did not."

"Nope. That's the confusing part. He's been stuck here overnight, and he's been sleeping the whole time. There's no way in hell that he could have snuck out to tinker. Whatever happened, it happened while he was sleeping and it happened right under our noses."

"Damn. Same here as well. All of his weapons and gear has changed."

"Changed?" Yang asked. Now it was her turn to sound incredulous. "What do you mean, changed?"

"They have turned into something else entirely, or simply disappeared into thin air."

"What? How? Your boss hasn't left this room."

"I do not know," Carmine lied. Unbecoming of a prospective Knight of Cainhurst, but the situation demanded it. Duty first, honour second.

Yang sighed. "Alright. It'll be good if you'd get here soon. He's still somewhat high from the drugs… he's showing signs of amnesia as well, so he probably doesn't remember what happened before his breakdown. You'll have to break the bad news to him."

"Understood," Carmine said, ending the call. She passed the scroll back to Ruby.

"What happened?" The younger red-garbed girl asked.

"My leader has arisen. I need to talk to him."

"Well, see you later then," Ruby said. She waved at her.

"Likewise."

Carmine turned and went off in the direction of the medical wing. She had a basic idea of what was going on, at least. Noctis's equipment and weapons seemed to be connected to his nightmares, somehow. The echoes in his blood held the memories of him obtaining the flamesprayer and the pistol, as well as him using them. If he got a new weapon in Yharnam, he either got a new weapon in Remnant or said weapon was integrated into his arm.

What had happened, then? Gascoigne's pistol had only changed her leader's parrying dagger, but the echoes of the owner's blood had nearly driven her leader mad. The flamesprayer had been first used against the Cleric Beast, and those echoes had no doubt contributed to his breakdown.

If his entire armoury had changed, something major must have happened. A massive fight, perhaps, or a death that would no doubt affect him for weeks afterwards. Something that must have changed his entire loadout in Yharnam or changed the way he fought.

Carmine broke out into a dead sprint. If something that bad had happened, she needed to get there as fast as possible.

 **(Noctis's new firearms are a HK MP5A5 SMG chambered in 9mm as an alternate mode to his primary weapon, and a HK USP chambered in .45 ACP plus a suppressor built into his arm - both Atlesian (German) firearms.** **Sorry this took so long... almost a month!)**


	21. Sunsets by Semtex (Part 1 of 2)

**(Ironwood's diary entry is inspired by a somewhat similar codex entry in The Weaver Option - a Worm and Warhammer crossover that I personally really enjoy. Do check it out!)**

"I know that such a large fleet being mobilised is concerning you, Nemo, but please do not be alarmed," Ozpin calmly said. He was currently trying to reason with a holographic projection of said AI, which was currently throwing a fit about what it saw as an invasion force from Atlas coming for Vale. So, to spare Ironwood and his entire armada from death by Arkbird, he now had to reason with Nemo.

"Oh, now it's my problem?" Nemo retorted, jabbing a finger at him. The AI's projection was clothed in the manner of a navy captain, with a white dress uniform along with an equally white cape and a peaked cap that conveniently shadowed the nonexistent face of the hologram. "Do you know how overstretched I am? I have to monitor the White Fang, the Grimmlands, the whole situation in Vacuo as well as hundreds of other conflict zones every day. And now I had to divert my only operational unit to investigate your shenanigans."

"If you're paying that much attention to a small Atlesian fleet, then how about Cainhurst's flagship?"

"It is currently underwater somewhere in the middle of the ocean. I know a red herring when I hear one, so get to the point before I lose my patience."

Ozpin sighed. "Look, what we have here is a high profile event. The Vytal Festival will have hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, attending over the course of the event. We need security to prevent unfortunate incidents, especially with the recent increase of White Fang activity in the city."

"The White Fang… how easy it would be to cut off the head of the snake is tempting indeed. A laser lance strike on Menagerie will rob them of their central command…" Nemo mulled, sending a chill down Ozpin's spine. "But I shall not. The presence of large numbers of civilians prevent me from doing so, as you very well know."

"What precisely are you getting at, Nemo?" Ozpin asked calmly.

At least, that was the case in Timeline A. In Timeline B, he drew his service pistol and shot the projector.

"This," the synthetic voice grated out. A stack of what appeared to be legal documents materialised in Nemo's hands, and said stack of paper was promptly slammed onto the top of Ozpin's desk. It would have been intimidating if said slam wasn't a perfectly cued sound effect, since the paper itself was just projected light. "You've been trying to shut down the mass drivers, I know that now. Fabricated evidence to declare that I have reached the end of my operational lifespan and thus need to be shut down, lawsuits to press your point, and finally deeds to buy over and demolish everything there. You're trying to starve me out and cut me off, Ozpin!"

Ozpin shut down the previous timeline, finally silencing the blaring alarm from his scroll that warned that the Arkbird was exiting low-planetary orbit. His first official encounter of the Bloody Crow had already given him enough nuclear warhead-induced death for a long while, and he didn't want to be left with the sight of Beacon being vaporised by the Arbkird's laser lance.

 **[TIMELINE B SHUT DOWN.]**

 **[TIMELINE B REESTABLISHED.]**

To defuse the situation adequately, he decided to deny everything and appear sympathetic. "I'm just a headmaster, Nemo. There's no way that I could possibly even do this, much less actually try to starve you out. Are you sure that these are my documents, and not from the Atlesian government or the Schnee Dust Company?"

Nemo's body language lightened, but it was clear that the AI was still extremely angry. "The documents are unsigned, but I still suspect that it was you. Who else has such a pull on Atlas?"

"Willow Schnee," Ozpin bluffed. Honestly, he didn't mind throwing Willow under the bus for this one. The SDC's autonomy as a corporation presented a rather large gap in security for him, especially since it meant that the Atlesian military's dust supply was not under his direct control. Taking the admittedly dangerous woman down a peg was a win-win in Ozpin's eyes.

Nemo gave a noncommittal grunt. "At least what you say makes sense. But why, though?"

"Simple. Deactivating the Arkbird means that Atlas's military has to step in to replace it. That means that they'll be using more dust. Subsequently, since the SDC holds a monopoly on dust for military use, Willow Schnee reaps the profits."

There was an electronic sigh. "Alright, fine. Your alibi adds up. I'll drop this particular case, but I'll be watching you _very_ closely. Do you understand?"

"I understand."

"We'll see," Nemo growled. The projection cut itself off, dissipating into nothingness. Ozpin filled his mug with coffee and sipped at the piping hot beverage to calm his nerves. Ironwood _definitely_ had some explaining to do.

Rather conveniently, the scroll on his desk buzzed. A message on it read 'access requested' and a 'y/n' option underneath. He tapped 'y', and far below him he heard a vault door's lock slide open. Speak of the devil and he shall arrive, it seemed. Soon enough, the elevator doors opened and revealed one James Ironwood.

"Ozpin."

"Ironwood. What in the world has brought you all the way down from Atlas?" Ozpin asked. Contrary to basic etiquette, he neglected to offer a mug of beverage to the general. "I thought that you would've liked to stay in your ivory tower for just a bit longer."

Ironwood winced slightly at the pointed remark, but remained unfazed. "Well, you know how much I love Vale this time of year. Besides, with you hosting, I thought that this might be a good opportunity for us to catch up."

"I can certainly appreciate the quality time between friends. However, a small fleet outside my window has me and other people concerned."

"Well, concerned is what brought them here," Ironwood replied.

Ozpin felt his eye start to twitch, but a sip of coffee soon rectified that. "And concerned is what nearly set the Arkbird on you. I was just negotiating with Nemo, and only barely convinced him to not blow your entire fleet out of the sky!" He snapped, smacking his desk with an open palm. Ironwood jumped in surprise. "What the hell were you thinking?"

Ironwood recoiled in surprise from the sudden outburst. Ozpin continued regardless, but in a calmer tone. "I understand that you have had your doubts about Project NEMO, but you can't just turn around and backstab the thing now that it's sentient. He dug up the paperwork that you had amassed, quite a lot of it if I may add, and quite literally slammed it into my desk," he said, pouring out a cup of coffee which Ironwood nervously accepted and set aside. "Don't worry, the coffee isn't poisoned. I might be harsh, but I'm not unreasonable. If I can be honest here? You did the right thing."

"What?"

"I am not kidding. Vicar Laurence, the man who had once burned down an entire city district in a way more akin to someone wiping off their desk after a laboratory experiment, has actually done something beneficial," Ozpin said, gesturing across the desk. "Of course, you could have used a little more subtlety. But now that I have successfully redirected Nemo's wrath onto one Willow Schnee, we have actually forced a silver lining out of this cloud of shit. As for the army you brought here… I must confess that the Bloody Crow must have rubbed off on you."

Ironwood sighed. "Oz, you and I both know why I brought those men."

"We are in a time of peace. Shows of power like this are just going to give off the wrong impression. They already have, as Nemo can attest."

"But if what Qrow said is true…"

"Again with the chess metaphor. Qrow came up with it, but you took to it like a duck to water. When will it occur to you that we haven't been playing chess all this time, but Go? 'Queen has pawns' indeed…"

"Go? Then why do you have a chess set?" Ironwood asked, pointing to the eponymous chess set which was stowed in its travel mode off to the side of the desk.

"Astute as always, General. The reason is that chess pieces are more easily recognisable. A Go piece can very well be mistaken for an oddly shaped pebble. Not the best for Initiation."

"Indeed. As for how we shall deal with his conundrum?"

"If what Qrow said is true, then we will handle it as tactfully as we possibly can. It's the Vytal Festival, a time to celebrate whatever unity and peace we can get, so I suggest that you refrain from scaring people by transporting hundreds of soldiers halfway across Remnant."

"I'm just being cautious," Ironwood replied, his tone quickly becoming defensive.

"As am I. Which is why we will continue to train the best Huntsmen and-" Ozpin began, but stopped. "Glynda, are you okay?"

She was most assuredly _not_ okay. Stumbling weakly into the room, coughing up blood, she collapsed before making it even halfway to the desk.

"Glynda!" Ironwood yelled, rushing off to the woman's side. Ozpin got up and walked after him. "What happened to you?"

"Master Willem, I've come to bid you farewell," she wheezed.

"What?"

"Oh I know, I know," Glynda continued, seemingly responding to her own words. "You think now to betray me."

"What are you saying, Glynda?"

"No, but you will never listen. I tell you, I will not forget our adage."

"Leave her, Ironwood," Ozpin instructed, pushing him away with his cane. "Let her say her piece."

"We are born of the blood, made men by the blood, undone by the blood… our eyes are yet to open."

"Fear the old blood," Ironwood muttered, just as Glynda said the exact same thing.

"By the gods, fear it, Laurence," she finished, before her head lolled into unconsciousness. Ironwood hefted Glynda in a classic fireman's carry, before turning to Ozpin.

"I know all too well what this means," Ozpin grumbled. "The last conversation we had before _you_ left and destroyed everything that I had worked my entire life for."

"In my defence, the Healing Church and Byrgernwerth were never really at odds. But yes, I recognised what she was saying. 'Fear the old blood' indeed, eh? But where could she have found out about it?"

"Your skull?" Ozpin hypothesised. "You got your memories of Yharnam back from your human skull in the Nightmare, so it makes sense that your actual beastly skull would have the same effect. But where was your skull kept?"

"On an altar in the central chamber of the Grand Cathedral. The last person to possess it was Vicar Amelia… shit," Ironwood trailed off, sudden realisation breaking out on his face. That realisation soon turned into the cold anger of one who had been lied to. "Ozpin. Why didn't you tell me that Amelia had remembered as well?"

"Because she hadn't really remembered," Ozpin coldly replied. "Rather like your situation, in fact; both of you turned into beasts which essentially lost everything that made them human. You had a reminder, your skull, that let you remember. Glynda had no such luxury."

Ironwood stared at him, walking off to the exit of the room. "Would it be best if some of us really didn't remember anything of what happened in that damned place? To carry our sins for millennia; is that punishment not enough?"

"No, not nearly enough. Our mistakes still live today, and we must do what we can to put them to rest. To forget would be the greatest sin of all."

The general huffed. "Do you have any idea what this means?"

"That Amelia is dead? That we possibly have a new Paleblood Hunter to deal with? That if he finds out about Rom we're all screwed if he connects the dots?" Ozpin retorted sharply, gesturing as he did. "I know that, Ironwood, but we can't do anything about it. There are hundreds of millions of people in Vale alone, not to mention the entirely of Remnant. With that in mind, tell me how exactly are we supposed to find _one_ person in all that?"

"I'm just being cautious."

"As am I. Which is why we will continue what we have always done; maintain secrecy at all costs, operate as a clandestine entity, and protect Remnant and its people as well as we can for as long as we can."

"Believe me, I intend to do just that," Ironwood replied, now actually walking out of the room with Glynda slumped over his back. "But ask yourself this; do you honestly think that all this will be enough?"

"I hope I never find out," Ozpin muttered. The door shut behind Ironwood.

He fiddled with the scroll on his desk, which was opened to the administrative portal of Beacon. Admittedly, using a team of freshmen to carry out such a delicate operation was a bad idea. He still had faith in them, however.

Noctis was well trained and highly professional; he didn't let his personal commitments get in the way of his work. The way he neutralised Blake in the docks despite their status as friends demonstrated that. He had a sound tactical and strategic mind, and was already showing himself to be able to plan and organise a complex method of action. However, his love of explosives - grenades in particular - didn't lend any sort of subtlety to him, and the less said about his psychological evaluation the better. There was for some reason a non-combat restriction placed on him for the next week, one which Ozpin decided to revoke early.

Carmine so far appeared competent enough, at least more so than her non-teammate peers. She seemed to have an innate knowledge of how to influence others; those on Roman's side didn't even know her gender. She backed Noctis up very well, bringing a mix of raw power and intimidation to back up her leader's versatility and general affability. At least she lacked the itchy detonator finger that her leader had, and served as a moderating influence. It was probably for the best, since Ozpin didn't want his school being blown up.

Icarus seemed to be a dependable asset. He hadn't hesitated to take a shot at Blake when she had showed up at the docks. Arguably he was more useful than Noctis in this kind of situation - a sniper with a bullet-time semblance, as well as an almost unbeatable prior reputation with the White Fang as Daedalus, tended to be a much better assassin - but he lacked his leader's versatility and grasp of tactics. He served as a direct contrast to Lapis; his sheer calmness tended to neutralise the hot-headed temper of his partner.

Lapis… she was a blunt instrument. She was good at killing people, large numbers of them in fact, but not much else besides. There was probably a depth of character from her hobby of being an artist, but Ozpin hadn't really seen it yet. Her prior notoriety from her service in the Legion had basically turned her into a figure of urban legend, and her distinctive armour and weapon had basically become almost as instantly recognisable as Troupe Master Grimm himself.

Ozpin was pretty sure that he remembered seeing Auxilia-themed t-shirts in Vacuo's market. It was rather morbid, especially since she had a kill count somewhere in the thousands, but it served to reflect exactly how recognisable she was.

She served as the powerhouse of the team, to be deployed as a last resort if things went irredeemably badly. It wasn't much, but at least he had the option to throw the baby out with the bath water if he had to.

Ozpin's fingers scrolled through what he knew to be Ironwood's personal journal. The entries were rather poetic and poignant, if a bit idealistic. Whatever. They were just what he needed to lift his spirit and strengthen his resolve.

/-/

 **Exhibit 1** \- An excerpt from the journal of the late Lord-General James Ironwood, written some time before the events that led to the start of the Second Great War. Responsible for leading the coalition of Vale and Atlas for the duration of the Second Great War, his flagship was shot down by the Pequod (Alicorn) with all hands lost in the fall of Atlas that ended the war.

 _We will not die quietly._

 _Human civilisations and those who defend them never die quietly, and I see no reason why we shouldn't continue this tradition._

 _Our enemies find every opportunity to belittle us, of course. Look at the Huntsmen, they say. Their so-called charges are an ignorant mass of barbarians and primitives. This world is the long-dead corpse of a dream. It is a bureaucratic nightmare governed by councils that can't agree even on the simplest of things._

 _This may be so. But you have to admit, these insults lose a bit of their lustre when their speakers are hiding behind the very walls that we defend._

 _There are those who consider some among us the lesser species because their jealousy of the additional animal features that Faunus have been gifted breeds hatred and systemic discrimination. Others think that their race is somehow better than the majority of humanity, lumping innocent people with those who had once looked down upon them. Still, is it not curious that both parties seem to disappear among the masses of civilians and set aside their differences when things actually get serious?_

 _In the end, I think the only entity which truly does not care about if humanity is weak or not is the Grimm. For them, the only point of importance is if humanity can give them a fight worthy of the name. Much as it is easy to loathe the creatures for everything they are, you have to at least respect them for their straightforwardness as well as their total absence of lies and subterfuge. From the moment we rose to civilisation, we have had to fight the creatures of Grimm for the domination of Remnant and they met us directly in battle without resorting to cheap excuses and treachery._

 _We fought. We are fighting. We will fight._

 _Humanity is the master of this world, and, while this is not the golden dream that those like the Allfather of late Valhalla promised, it is doing the task that it was designed for._

 _Mankind rules this world. Despite the constant threat of the Grimm outside the walls, despite the raids and conflicts of terrorists like the White Fang and the Legion, despite the all too frequent ravages of the Grimm Troupe, despite a thousand and one threats rising yearly to assail the peace that keeps men united, Remnant endures._

 _United under a single banner, humanity can survive._

 _There is no back-up plan. The God that most of us worship is silent and has done nothing to help us. No angels have descended from the heavens to bring salvation to mankind. Most of the great heroes of the age, strong Huntsmen who were regarded as a beacon of hope against the swarm, are gone._

 _But we are still here._

 _Humanity will not disappear into the night without a fight. We are stubborn. We are strong. We are united, for better or worse._

 _To the end of glory._

/-/

The training robot lunged forward, its inbuilt halberd raised for a sharp downwards blow. A burst of 9mm AP rounds directly into the robot's armoured torso punched a hole in it, putting an end to that as well as its synthetic life. The red dot sight on his SMG turned out to be perfect for this kind of close-range work, which worked in his favour. The robot's now empty chassis clattered to the ground, which would have been somewhat relieving if it was the last one.

"One down, eight more to go," he muttered, Obviously he hadn't set the entire contingent of training robots on him, but slightly more than half of them was possibly overkill. Never mind. He needed to blow off some steam, after all.

The second robot lunged at him with a handaxe built into its wrist. He dodged effortlessly, changing his grip on his submachine gun to stow it on his back while allowing the robot to stumble past him. The pistol built into his arm unfolded and assembled itself in his hand, and he deftly slid a fresh twelve-round magazine into the pistol's grip before placing the muzzle of the gun's suppressor directly on the back of the robot's head before pulling the trigger.

The .45 hollow-point round, designed to expand post-penetration so as to achieve as much stopping power as possible, blew the metal skull open like an overripe grapefruit. Bits of circuitry and metal clattered to the ground with the muffled thump of his pistol's report, but unfortunately the spray of hydraulic fluid that would been blocked by the lens of his gas mask ended up getting into his eyes. He snarled in annoyance and pain, vainly trying to wipe off the worst of the fluid with his gloved hand as he did.

There was a fundamental change in his weapons and garb, but his fighting style had also changed. A lack of a rebreather, which meant that he was no longer breathing in a mixture of sweat and old body odour every time he was in a combat situation, was a new sensation that made him feel uneasy if only because there wasn't a guarantee that whatever he was breathing in was safe or not. Getting used to conventional firearms after years of a laser weapon had been hard but doable, especially since his now missing shotgun-pistol had served as a pretty good reintroduction back into the world of projectiles instead of beams.

He took his submachine gun off of his back before transforming back into its sheathed cane-sword form, unsheathing the sword and clipping the sheath at his side before triggering yet another mechanism to transform it yet again into its whip form. For the life of him he didn't know how the damn thing worked - it was a rigid bladed cane-sword that transformed into a serrated whip. Noctis lashed out with the whip, hitting and neutralising one more sword-wielding robot. He offhandedly shot the robot's head with his pistol, destroying the synthetic brain and tying up that loose end.

A fourth robot charged him with a spiked club, but Noctis simply stepped aside and let the robot bury the muzzle of his suppressor into its own gut. It hunched over, seemingly in pain due to being forcefully jabbed by the foreign tubular object in its gut, allowing Noctis to simply fire a shot into its gut. The robot staggered back from the force of the .45 hollow-point round forcibly entering it and failing to exit, allowing Noctis to shoot it once more in the torso about where someone's heart would be for a real person. The robot stumbled about, hydraulic fluid and oil spurting out of the holes in its body, and the artificial blood loss eventually caused the robot to collapse to the ground and thrash about in its simulated death throes before going still.

"Seriously?" He heard someone ask, before a series of gunshots rang out with the sound of tearing cloth. A fifth robot dropped to the ground, its cause of death somewhat obvious since it was shredded beyond recognition. "I thought that you were banned from doing this exact thing."

Carmine leapt into the arena and landed with a metallic clang from her armour, zweihander in one hand and her one-handed LMG- _kurz_ in the other. The rifle's muzzle was smoking. "Did Goodwitch not ban you from your weapons?"

"It got lifted a week early."

His partner rolled her eyes. "Of course," she muttered, stowing the LMG- _kurz_ on her back. She then assumed a two-handed stance, managing to block a blow from a larger mace-wielding robot as she did. "What difficulty did you set these things on?"

"Default combat-trained human."

"Good. For a second I thought that you had set all of them to Huntsman mode, and then the both of us would die here."

"I'm not _that_ suicidal," Noctis shot back. Carmine dodged a second blow from the two-handed mace, rolling into the strike before getting to her feet and slashing into the robot's gut. The two nearly bisected pieces, only bound together by a metallic facsimile of a spine, dropped like a sack of bricks.

"How goes your familial reconciliation, then?" Carmine asked. Noctis kept silent, eliciting a sigh from the knight. "Why do you persist in refusing to apologise to her?"

"Because she won't accept my apology, alright?"

"She cannot accept an apology that has not even been offered, dear leader."

Noctis slammed the cane's whip form into the ground, locking the blades together to form a rigid bladed cane. Said bladed cane parried away a stray katana slash from a robot before a riposte punched it through where a person's heart would be. The robot's synthetic cadaver was then kicked off of his blade. "I nearly killed her, Carmine. I was going to kill her before you brought me back from the brink. Do you think that that can be forgiven?"

"Family forgives everything. I once broke a vase, but did my father excommunicate me? Clearly, he did not."

"That's different. A vase is a vase," Noctis grumbled, sheathing his cane-sword before transforming the sheathed weapon into his submachine gun. He slid the partially empty magazine out of his suppressed pistol before it retracted back into his arm, keeping the magazine in its proper pouch afterwards. "Nearly killing your sibling is another thing altogether."

"But a millennia-old vase is not just any vase. I broke a veritable historical relic, but my father still forgave me. Some vases are still worth more than others, and in your case you probably broke one made in the beginning of the universe, but familial bonds mean that all broken vases can be forgiven."

A crossbow bolt from an eighth robot, hanging back and taking aim due to its being programmed to act as a marksman, glanced off of Noctis's aura. He span around, flicking his SMG's fire selector to three-round burst, and fired at the robot. The three rounds passed by the scope of the crossbow and hit the training robot in the face, blowing said robot's brains out through the back of its synthetic head.

"That was remarkably clean," Carmine commented, reverting to a one-handed grip. The energy shield on her left wrist activated with a shimmer of light. "The realism of these training robots in terms of simulating human anatomy is impeccable as always, I see."

"I take pride in not messing up the things I'm best at," Noctis replied, staring down the last robot while transforming his weapon back into its melee form, evaluating the latest threat. It was a particularly large one, armed with a massive sledgehammer that practically mandated two hands to wield it. He unsheathed his cane-sword before collapsing his suppressed pistol back into his hand. "How about we work together on this last one?"

"Gladly. How do you wish to proceed?"

The robot decided for them, lunging forward and bringing the hammer down onto Carmine's shield. Noctis dodged out of the way, slashing into the back of the robot's exposed knee before bringing his pistol up and shooting from the hip. The cane-sword readily cut through the tendons and ligaments there, at least before the .45 hollow-point round pulverised the kneecap, and soon enough the robot had been brought down to one knee.

"Now!" He yelled, jabbing a finger at the now exposed neck. Carmine got the message, deactivating her shield and grasping her claymore in two hands before beheading the training robot. It dropped to the ground, the stump that was its neck violently spurting hydraulic fluid as it did.

"Scenario no. 27 had been cleared. Training system deactivated." The automated control terminal declared. The doors of the arena unlocked themselves.

Carmine sheathed her zweihander, the sword now strapped to her back. Noctis's pistol shrank back into his arm, the now nearly empty magazine being kept yet again in its pouch. "You have yet to answer my question."

"I said that I'll do it _later_ ," Noctis snapped, sheathing his sword yet again before taking out a handkerchief to clean off the remainder of the hydraulic fluid from his face. "Let's just get to business and get that comms jammer done by tonight."

"Do you have the intel we need?" The knight beside him asked. At least she was letting him change the subject. "We know where Roman will be tomorrow; he will be in an abandoned warehouse in the industrial district for a White Fang recruitment drive. But we do not know anything about what will happen while he is in the warehouse."

"But now we do," Noctis replied, fishing out a thumb drive from a pocket in his greatcoat. "Roman's contact sent the files to my burner scroll. It's his boss's way of giving us a mission briefing without actually briefing us. Still, the little snippets I've seen in this are a doozy when actually considered from a tactical stand. We'll have to change up our plan."

"A plan you have not told us yet."

"A plan that is now useless since I was previously running on intuition and educated guessing."

"Do you have a relevant one now, at least?" Carmine prodded. "After all, improvisation in the field is hardly our forte. Remember what happened at the docks?"

"Yes. Eight dead on our side, thirty injured," Noctis said solemnly. "I'm still surprised that Ruby and co were able to shrug it off so easily."

"They are Huntsmen, not mere children. They, like us, have trained for battle for almost their entire lives. Of course, the first few instances of death and bloodshed they witness will break them, but they will recover."

"But we are not Huntsmen. We are a band of killers pretending to be them. I am a bodyguard; that's why I find fighting other people easier than fighting Grimm. You are a knight-in-training of Cainhurst, raised to defend the throne above all else. Icarus is an assassin, more used to killing from the shadows than engaging in open battle like a proper, heroic, Huntsman would. Lapis is the Legion's vanguard, the unstoppable force and the immovable object," Noctis rattled off, straightening his peaked cap as he did. "None of us are heroes; we aren't Huntsmen."

"But this is the fate of all of us; Remnant is in a state of perpetual war, after all. Ruby will have to go through this. Pyrrha will have to go through this."

"Carmine. What are you trying to imply?" Noctis said quietly.

"I am implying that you should start to back off," Carmine replied evenly. "Your sister is hardly vulnerable. She is trained for mortal combat. She is practically unparalleled among her peers. Logically, she should therefore no longer be your responsibility and your burden to bear. You, Noctis, are your own person. I think that it is about time that your life stops revolving around someone else."

Noctis didn't know how to respond. He actually hadn't thought about that, to be honest. Maybe Pyrrha had been trying to hint that to him for a while now, but he had probably failed to notice. But, to be honest, maybe he had completely missed the point. He barely felt like a human being now, and his life as of the last year or so could be summarised as merely drifting from one objective to another. He probably hadn't noticed because his main directive - protect his sister at all costs - was still active, but now there was doubt being cast on even that.

"Meet me at our dorm room at eight for the planning of tomorrow's mission," he finally said, turning away from the conversation and towards the exit of the arena.

"Where do you think you are going?" Carmine asked, her voice raised.

"Somewhere to think," Noctis said. That, at least, was the truth.

/-/

Icarus put the finishing touches on the comms jammer. It was a device fashioned out of one of the more intact electronic warfare modules that was salvaged from Carmine's pod, and so far it seemed to be working as planned.

"Hey," Lapis said in greeting, dumping a box of machinery onto the workbench next to him. "How goes the comms jammer?"

"It would probably be faster if I had some help," he grumbled.

"Let the other two have their private time. As for me… well, I'm good at making things that either kill people or stop other people from doing the same to you. Unless you want this thing to be covered in tank-grade armour or have so much explosives stuffed into it that it may as well be an artillery shell, you probably don't want me to step in."

"That's probably for the best. Besides that, can you help me?"

"How?"

A few switches were flicked. "Try calling Carmine now."

"You sure?" Lapis replied. "It probably won't be strong enough to block out CCT signals. Those are meant to cross continents."

"It has to be," Icarus replied. "We can't have Roman contacting the White Fang after we get started."

Lapis keyed in the number. "Okay, I'll do it. Just don't be disappointed if Carmine picks up, alright?'

"We'll see."

There was a pause, punctuated only by Lapis slowly becoming more and more frustrated. Icarus peeked over her shoulder to find that the scroll was displaying a rather satisfying 'no signal'.

"Fine, it works," his partner reluctantly admitted. "Now can you switch it off? I need to tell the boss that we're done on our end."

"I'll tell him," Icarus said, flicking the switch. "We'll need to do some testing for the maximum effective range of this thing later on, though."

He keyed in Noctis's number. This time, the call patched through.

"Noctis here, what's up?"

"The jammer's done. It's working, but we haven't tested the range yet."

"The range shouldn't be much of a problem," Noctis replied curtly. "We've found a way to place it where it's most needed."

"Where?"

"I'll tell you and Lapis later. 8pm, at our dorm room. Ensure no one eavesdrops or follows you."

"Ah," Icarus said in assent. Looks like it was one of _those_ plans, then. "On another note, how did your conversation with Carmine go?"

Noctis's silence said a lot. "That bad, huh?" Icarus asked.

"Yeah… it went pretty deep," his leader finally replied.

"Metaphorically, I hope. Beacon's rumour machine would go wild if it was literal."

Relievingly, Noctis started to chuckle. "You know, at least I have to be grateful that it's you I'm talking to and not Lapis. I'd never hear the end of it from her."

Lapis, off to the side, was visibly straining to hear the conversation if her bear ears twitching was any sign. Icarus decided to take pity on her. "Talking about Lapis…" He began. "Have you ever heard the saying about the devil?"

"Speak of the devil and he shall appear? Icarus, don't tell me that-"

"Yeah, Lapis is here. I'm pretty sure that she heard some parts of our conversation, but it probably wasn't that clear. How about you clarify it with her so that things don't get misinterpreted?" Icarus said cheerfully, placing his scroll on the workbench he was sharing with his partner before sliding it over to said partner.

"Wait!" He heard Noctis shout over the scroll, but it was too late. With an impish smile on her face, Lapis raised it up to her ear.

"Heya, boss. Heard that you and Carmine got rather _deep_. Remind me again, which base is that? Third or fourth?"

Noctis's sigh, which was audible even without the scroll being set to speaker mode, spoke volumes.

/-/

It was 7:58 pm, at least according to her chronometer. Carmine was getting steadily more impatient, especially since Lapis was giggling at her and she didn't know why. Apparently But it didn't really matter, especially since their leader would arrive in less than five minutes to deliver a crucial briefing.

"What exactly are you laughing at?" She snapped, turning to the other girl.

"Nothing much," Lapis forced out, reining in her laughter. "It's just that I can't believe how oblivious Noctis is."

"Oblivious about what? Both of us are merely focusing on the mission, while you on the other hand are implying fraternisation."

"God, You two are both hopeless," Lapis said exasperatedly, shaking her head. Carmine rolled her eyes in response, and continued waiting.

Noctis arrived precisely at 8pm, dressed in his academy uniform instead of his officer's uniform - save for his detonator gauntlet - and seemingly unarmed save for his inbuilt weapons. He wordlessly took the thumb drive out and slotting it into the computer on said desk before keying in a password that looked to be longer than Carmine's own name, and royalty names tended to be made up of ten or more normal ones strung together. The files within began to load, eventually opening in multiple pop-ups that Noctis then projected via connecting the room's television to the computer.

"You know our assignment," Noctis began, fiddling with the computer as he did. "It is to kill Roman Torchwick, along with Adam Taurus, and discover what they are currently planning. From what we found in Mountain Glenn, it can be stated with reasonable certainty that the latter is some kind of coup d'état planned for the near future. However, we do not have a proper timeframe for when this coup will take place. Therefore, as of now we can do nothing to prevent it."

The projector finally lit up, displaying an image of some sort of battle mech on the screen. It was being loaded into a shipping container that was itself connected to a cargo Bullhead. "What we can do is complete one third of our objective. Tomorrow, this will be unveiled. A prototype Atlesian Paladin-290 battle mech, touted as the be-all and end-all replacement for conventional armoured vehicles, that was stolen by the White Fang. This will be the centrepiece for a White Fang recruitment rally, one in which Roman will be present."

"You told me earlier that the presence of this Paladin meant a change in the plan," Carmine stated, raising her hand. "What changed?"

"Everything," Noctis said simply. "You see, Roman's getaway plan is stated to involve commandeering the Paladin. We have no way to neutralise the Paladin safely once it gets going; none of us barring Lapis have enough firepower to down a walking tank, and the laser cutter has a much too high chance of causing even more collateral damage than what the Paladin itself will cause. Furthermore, we have Neo to deal with."

"Neo?" Lapis asked. "Who's that?"

Noctis opened a dossier on another pop-up. "Neo, short for Neopolitian. Roman's bodyguard-cum-assassin. Not much else besides, since her personal data has been essentially purged from public records. It's also highly likely that 'Neopolitian' is a nom de guerre. However, we do know some scant details about her semblance, namely that it is listed as 'Illusion type'. That's it."

"That's it?" Icarus asked disbelievingly. "She's a total unknown?"

"As much as I hate to admit it, yes. That is why we need to neutralise both Roman and Neo in one fell swoop."

"Then what do we do, precisely?" Carmine prodded.

"The plan is this; tomorrow, I will attach the jammer to the Paladin's electronic warfare suite under some bullshit premise about how it will jam enemy comms. It will magnify the signal of the jammer so much that it will cover three city blocks, which will be just barely enough for this job. We will then attach plastic explosives to every single damn thing supporting the warehouse's weight. Pillars, supports, everything that looks like it gives the building structural integrity needs to have explosives slapped on it. Then, I use this."

Noctis's right-hand bracer shifted, something extending out from the underside of his wrist into his hand before fully forming into a detonator. "I've set this to simultaneously set off the explosives and activate the jammer at the same time. We take down Roman and bury the stolen Atlesian Paladin in one fell swoop, all while leaving the whole thing to the interpretation of others since the jammer will clean up the evidence."

"What I meant was what are we _individually_ meant to do."

"Oh…" Noctis said sheepishly, in stark contrast to the businesslike demenanor he had put on only a few seconds ago. "Well… you're with me, Carmine. Roman already knows that we're his hired help, and it'll be suspicious if we don't turn up anyways. Icarus, you will be providing overwatch through his sniper scope. Make sure that our explosives placement is undetected and uninterrupted, and do not hesitate to take any necessary shots to ensure that. Lapis… you have the most important job of all."

"What's my job then, boss?" Lapis asked, her casual tone contrasting with the serious look she had on her face.

"You're our tank-killing backup. If shit goes FUBAR tomorrow and Roman gets into that Paladin to kill all of us, you are literally the only person we have with enough firepower to reliably put it down. You will maintain position near Icarus's spot - within half a kilometre of the warehouse - and only move in if Icarus, Carmine or myself requests for your signature brand of heavy fire support. Roger?"

"Sounds good to me," she said, shrugging.

"Alright, that's about it," Noctis exclaimed triumphantly, clapping his hands together as he did. "One way or another we're putting Roman and his little girl into the ground, but we'd better not fuck this up. If we do, then you may as well bend me over a barrel and shove your fingers up my arse because that is exactly how fucked we are if we fail this mission. Any questions?"

"I have one," Icarus said. "What if, like in the docks, friendlies show up?"

Noctis's expression immediately darkened. The suppressed pistol extended out of his left arm, and he idly turned it over in his hand before sliding back the slide and allowing it to spring back. "Then the mission still carries on as planned. The jammer still gets installed, and the charges still get detonated. We cannot afford to continue accommodating rogue elements, especially not in such a crucial mission. It's a decision of being between a rock and a hard place, but it's one that we have to be prepared to make."

Icarus just glowered at him in response, signalling with his hand for Noctis to carry on. Noctis retracted his pistol in response. Perhaps, Carmine thought, maybe Icarus had some personal reasons at stake to prevent Blake and the monkey-tailed boy - apparently his name was Sun, just like the light-providing star outside that she was still having problems getting used to - from getting blown to smithereens. Or perhaps it was just human decency. She couldn't really tell the difference.

"What is our plan if the Paladin goes active?" Carmine asked. "It would be inadvisable to rely on any one person, no matter how powerful, to neutralise a prototype weapon of war with unknown capabilities."

"Ozpin gave us some basic specs," Noctis replied, opening yet another pop-up to reveal a blueprint and some schematics. "We know the basic armour values and the weapons that this thing's packing. It's more heavily armed than a fucking gunship - it has cannons, missiles and literal collapsible fists - but the armour isn't anything that can't be beat with normal anti-armour ordnance or liberal application of thermite. Essentially, it can kill us but we can also kill it."

"But the problem is in the collateral damage, huh?" Lapis noted grimly. "The Paladin is primarily meant against Grimm, right? Then precision isn't gonna be one of its priorities."

"Then we take it out before it goes active," Noctis declared, baring his teeth in a savage facsimile of a smile. The pistol in his hand, which was presumably meant as a sidearm, suddenly didn't look so reassuring. "Let's just hope that tomorrow will be _fun_."

/-/

The Grimm Dragon slept. Might as well get as much sleep as it could before tomorrow, it reasoned. Above it, on the floor of the warehouse proper, it heard Roman ask "Here? Seriously?"

"Yes," a much fainter female voice replied. The presumption was that it was using those communication devices that the humans used… scrolls, that was what they were called. "This exact warehouse, Roman."

"You've got to be kidding me, Cinder," Roman blustered. "You _know_ that this is where we're keeping the Wyrm."

There was a long pause. "You're… keeping the Wyrm under a warehouse?"

"Well, yeah. Didn't you know?"

"I did not, no."

"Goddamn it. You didn't know that the Troupe Master quite literally dumped his pet dragon on my lap?"

"When?"

"Before the most recent attack."

"At least that explains why the Wyrm wasn't sighted there," Cinder said unhappily. "It's so hard to coordinate with the Troupe sometimes."

"Wait, you're working with the Troupe?"

"Not exactly. Think about how the police and the firefighters work for the same people; the city and its government. The Troupe and I are colleagues in that regard."

Roman sighed. "Alright, back on topic. Do we keep this venue?"

"Yes, you have to. The Troupe Master specifically instructed me to direct you to this exact place."

"Fine. If that's the case, I'll tell the oversized lizard not to throw a hissy fit tomorrow."

"Astute as always, Roman. Over and out," the voice said. With that, the call cut itself off.

The Dragon woke up, analysing its surroundings once more. It was a basement, hurriedly equipped with bars to enclose it and hay for it to rest on.

There was a riddle it had heard once; a wyvern has six eyes but only needs two to see. The question was what the other four were for. The answer, to be honest, was rather simple.

 _Two for the past_.

This warehouse was once owned by a toy manufacturer. Childrens' toys, from teddy bears to building blocks, once took up this entire space from floor to ceiling. Those toys were almost entirely gone now, except for some mouldy boxes of recalled ones - mostly lawn darts, but there was a miniature nuclear laboratory in one particular box - in the corner. The mock-up laboratory was a rather ingenious or idiotic idea, according to who one asked, simply because it came with a thumbnail-sized chunk of uranium to experiment with.

Despite the clear and present danger, it took a foolish Huntress-in-training using said uranium to build a miniature nuclear warhead which was then installed into a cannon shell and subsequently fired to initiate a recall. It would have been comedic if not for the fact that said Huntress-in-training had passed away in palliative care almost a decade ago due to acute radiation poisoning.

The toy manufacturer had shuttered due to said uranium scandal, and the warehouse had been abandoned due to a lack of buyers. The criminal elements of Vale had moved in soon after, and the warehouse became a stockpile for drugs and illegal weapons.

 _Two for the present_.

Then the White Fang stepped in. The previous criminal owners were summarily executed and flung into the waters surrounding Vale's harbour. The drugs were destroyed and the weapons were taken for their own use. This place under the White Fang was a site for recruitment drives, rabble-rousing rallies and general publicity. Now it belonged to Roman, the more recent terrorist owners wanting nothing to do with the current lair of the Wyrm. So here it slept, waiting for tomorrow.

 _Two for the future_.

Tomorrow, this place would be a mass grave. There would be death here, the Wyrm was sure of this, but as of now the dead were faceless. Seeing the future was rather like looking at a vague blueprint; it was extremely hard to visualise the specifics. Looking at the past, in comparison, was as easy as admiring a Rembrandt. But the anticipation of death… it clung in the air like the smell of ignited gunpowder.

It heard footsteps. Six eyes moved as one to register Roman walking towards the entrance of its ad hoc enclosure.

"Hey, you oversized lizard. Can you hear me?" The orange-haired human asked, rather impertinently to the Wyrm's taste. "Actually, it doesn't really matter if you can or can't hear me."

It did not. Roman had no relevance whatsoever in the near future.

"All I need you to do is sit tight and don't make any noise tomorrow. Don't bust through the floor or anything like that, or else you'll scare the recruits off. Alright? Should be easy enough for a big lout like you to understand, I hope."

The Grimm Dragon stayed stock still, analysing the insect before it. If life was a straight line with a sudden end, this one's line was nothing more than a stub.

"Well, good night," Roman declared, already turning around to walk away. "Sleep tight, and don't let whatever count as Grimm bedbugs bite."

Soon enough, the footsteps faded out to nothing. The Wyrm felt the temptation to burn this entire place to cinders, especially after the maddening irreverence of the orange-haired insect, but that urge was soon reined in. It had a purpose here, after all.

 _One day more_.

Tomorrow it would discover what the Master had in store for it. It knew its fate, for now at least.

 _One more dawn_.

One more night stuck in this cesspit of a lair. Perhaps it would find a better one out in the mountains, preferably a lonely one with a hoard of treasure for it to use as a bed. Gold and precious gems were always welcome, especially as a reprieve from weeks of sleeping on base hay.

 _One more day_.

It would see freedom tomorrow, borne on the wings of death. That, at least, was a given.

 **(Exhibit 1 - Ironwood's diary excerpt - is, chronologically speaking, published after this story's epilogue. An epilogue that I will probably take half a decade, if not more, to reach. As the chapter title probably made clear, this and the next chapter will be directly correlated. The next one will basically be where the proverbial excrement meets the industrial turbine fan.)**


	22. Sunsets by Semtex (Part 2 of 2)

**(Since the Vilebloods are technically vampires... I decided to get them inspired by the kharisiri - Peruvian fat vampires from Masks of Nyarlathotep. Surely that'll go down well... enough with that, on with the chapter.)**

Noctis placed the last of the explosives, the detonator letting out a faint beep as it armed. Luckily for him, none of the guards acting as security seemed to find his actions amiss. He reached to the side of his head, activating the comms bead in his left ear.

"Ishmael, all packages have been secured," he said into the comms. His new uniform included a little microphone attached to a thin metal arm reaching from a comms bead in his left ear to just left of his mouth, which made communicating that much easier.

"Well done, Ahab. Now get back to the stage," Carmine replied. "It is time for the second act."

"You make it sound like this is gonna be some sort of play."

"I do not recall plastic explosives having a part in _any_ theatrical performance."

Noctis sighed. "A shame. You know, there was this play I watched once. Some old tale of star-crossed lovers… the girl was on a balcony, if I remember correctly."

"Do you remember any specific lines?"

"Oh, I remember a few. 'O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name, or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer be a Capulet.'"

"Romeo and Juliet. You know, we have that even in Cainhurst. You have actually watched it? I never thought that you were the kind of person to enjoy the arts."

"Come on, I'm no Philistine. You'd be surprised. It was honestly a dare between me and my sister; we'd bring each other to the kind of event we knew the other hated. I dare you to guess who chose the play."

"Pyrrha?"

"Nope, she dragged me off to a death metal concert. The play was my idea."

"Your sister? She likes death metal?"

"Well, yes. I swear, if she was a guy I'd be having women over as guests every day of the week. She works hard and plays even harder. I guess I'm lucky that she's the fairer sex."

"They tend to focus on exclusively one person, from personal experience."

Noctis sighed. "Then I'm even luckier that Jaune is as oblivious as he is."

"I see that the pot is calling the kettle black."

"What?"

"Never mind. That, my dear leader, is irrelevant to this mission. Save the chatter for the debriefing."

Noctis walked up to the stage, stowing his submachine gun on his back. He supposed that if shit really did hit the fan, he could just start flinging thermite grenades like a lunatic in the hope that he could maim the Paladin somewhat or preferably render it immobile before the charges went off. That or fire as much lead as he could in its general direction and hope for the best, otherwise known as 'spray and pray' - the esteemed combat methodology utilised by pretty much every gangster in Remnant.

"Just in time," Carmine said. She was seated at the edge of the stage, her legs dangling off of it. "It would be best if we did not stay here for too long."

He fiddled experimentally with the peaked cap on his head, shifting it to ensure that the visor was casting a shadow over his face. Reassured that it was indeed concealing his identifying features somewhat, he turned around to look at the Paladin.

It was a behemoth. Much larger than even a tank, it loomed over the entire warehouse. Noctis noticed numerous missile launchers already, as well as various large guns of indeterminate calibres, all while the collapsible fists were collapsed on the arms to expose the cannons there. It had a rough unfinished look to it, which made sense because it was a prototype. Exposed mechanisms and joints hinted of its lack of heavy armour, meaning that it was probably still vulnerable to things like explosives.

"Admiring the Paladin?" Carmine asked, turning her armoured head in his direction. "I must admit that it is one fine vehicle, but I personally still prefer conventional tanks."

Noctis shrugged, finding a maintenance ladder and a toolbox. The maintenance ladder was pulled to the side of the battle mech, and the toolbox was promptly pilfered for a screwdriver, a wire cutter, a pair of pliers and a wire stripper. It was as if he was a surgeon, except with the added benefit that his 'patient' could not die on the operating table. Specialising as a combat engineer had its perks, after all.

"Are you sure you want to do this now?" Carmine asked concernedly. "What if someone sees us?"

"We are _seven_ hours early. Look at the time; it's only three pm," Noctis replied, taking one hand off of the ladder to gesture at a nearby clock. "Relax. No one else is here."

"Alright. Just be careful. It is most probable that the White Fang will not welcome your tinkering."

"Too bad for them," Noctis drawled, loosening the panel covering the cockpit electronics. It was a relatively routine operation, cutting some wires while exposing and reattaching others. Luckily, there was more than enough space for a brick-sized object or multiple within that he had no need to remove something else. "Reckon that I should add something extra, in case things go south?"

"What?"

"Three of my new demolitions charges," Noctis explained, opening the cockpit of the Paladin as he did. "I'll code them to be set off with the same press of the detonator, just in case Roman manages to get himself inside the Paladin."

"Thereby placing what is effectively a kill switch in the cockpit in the case that our worst case scenario occurs," Carmine concluded. "I like your idea. Just the right amount of viciousness to keep this from becoming repetitive. Just make sure that you place them where he will not find them."

Noctis fixed the remotely detonated explosives to places where they would be as inconspicuous as possible. Best not meddle with it too much, he reasoned, lest Roman finds something amiss. Soon, he found himself closing the cockpit before screwing the panel back in. A high-power oxyacetylene torch emerged from within his arm, and it was promptly used to weld the panel shut. "The jammer and explosives are in."

"Excellent," Carmine replied automatically, before pausing. "You said that we are seven hours early, correct?"

"Yeah," Noctis said, sliding down the ladder to return to the floor of the stage. The oxy-fuel torch retracted back into his arm. "The rally only starts at 11pm; essential personnel like us have been instructed to arrive on site at 10pm."

"So what do we do now?"

"Well… we could go out for a drink? Not alcohol, mind you," Noctis said hurriedly, raising his hands to placate his visibly affronted teammate. "Best not to get drunk on the job. No, what I meant was that I know a pretty good cafe around here. Good tea, good food, the works. We'll settle down there for a bit before just walking around downtown Vale."

"Could we perhaps pay a visit to the bookshop?"

"You mean Tukson's Book Trade? I don't see why not," Noctis replied. "Just don't buy too much; the last time we went there I think you bought at least ten kilograms worth of reading material that, if I remember correctly, I had to lug around for you. Remember, we can't carry around that much since we're technically on our job."

"A shame," Carmine said somewhat sadly. "But it was kind of funny how you managed to get those books onto the flight back."

"And I nearly got arrested over it. Teleporting into the cargo hold wasn't the smartest thing to do."

"But it was definitely amusing to watch."

Noctis sighed, taking off the submachine gun from his back. He transformed his weapon into its sheathed cane-sword form, fixing it back to his side in one swift movement. "Enough about my little mistakes, please. On another note, should we get going?"

Carmine moved off from where she was sitting, getting up before sliding her visor up to reveal her face. Noctis realised that she looked rather gaunt. "Yes, we should."

"You okay?" Noctis asked. "You look kinda gaunt. You know, prominent cheekbones and sunken eyes, the whole shebang."

"Oh, you mean this?" Carmine inquired, reaching up with an armoured hand to feel her face. "It is nothing to be worried about. It is just that I have not fed in a while."

"Didn't you have breakfast?"

"I did, but this requires a _different_ kind of feeding. No matter. I shall settle this later this evening, though I must implore you not to interfere."

"Why?"

"Privacy, dear leader. This form of feeding is rather… intimate."

"Oh," Noctis said simply, his face heating up as he considered the implications. "Alright, then. I'll leave you to it."

"I would recommend that. It would be truly unfortunate if you were to intervene at an inopportune moment."

Noctis reached up to his head, taking a deep breath before before enjoying the late afternoon breeze. "Finally, fresh air."

"It turns out that the that huge rebreather you had was rather overkill, yes?" Carmine asked rhetorically, moving in next to him.

"Hey, I like to make sure that the air I'm breathing is safe. You saw how much dust was in there, after all. I'm surprised that they hadn't even bothered to clean the place up before tonight."

Carmine rolled her eyes. "You were saying something about tea. Do they have coffee as well?"

"Duh," Noctis said eloquently. He shrugged, somehow failing to jostle the cap on his head as he did. "Haven't tried it, though. It should be good, from how many people I've seen that asked for coffee."

They started walking towards the exit, careful to cover their own tracks. Suddenly, Carmine turned to him. "One more thing, dear leader."

"What?"

"Let us try to keep the death to a minimum, yes?"

"Yeah," Noctis replied, his tone somber. "We'll try."

"You do not sound the least bit confident," Carmine remarked. "But it is worth a try."

"Of course," Noctis shrugged, already thinking about what he would get at the cafe. He felt like having something strong to put his mind off of things, so maybe Assam? The malty aftertaste would definitely be welcome, for one. For food… perhaps a good plate of haggis? He _was_ feeling rather peckish, after all.

"Forgive me for asking, but what would you recommend at the cafe?" Carmine asked, squinting her eyes at the strong sunlight. They had just exited the warehouse after what felt like hours in the semi-total darkness of the unlit building, and the sunlight was making them regret every single second that their eyes had spent being accustomed to the darkness.

"Tea and haggis. But you prefer your coffee pure, don't you?"

"Well, yes."

"Heretic," Noctis muttered under his breath, before actually recommending something to his partner. "If you like coffee, then some pastries would go along well with it."

"If you hate coffee so much, how about hot chocolate?"

"That's like asking the Pope whether he prefers sodomy with his adultery," Noctis deadpanned. "No, seriously. It contains even less caffeine than coffee, which already doesn't do anything for me. The only way I'd ever like those drinks is if they were spiked with good whiskey."

Carmine sighed. "You and caffeine, I swear..."

Noctis smiled. "Hey, at least it won't destroy my liver like alcohol would. It gives me all the energy I need to pester you, partner."

Carmine punched him playfully in the arm.

/-/

Blake checked her watch - it was currently eleven pm. Not _that_ late in her opinion, but still late enough for sleep to subtly beckon to her tired mind and body. The industrial district was utterly silent and barely lit by a few streetlights, which was both good and bad. Good because the low level of light would help to obscure their identities. Bad because no one would be able to see them if things went badly. She started subconsciously tracing with her fingers the White Fang emblem, carved into the wall of a warehouse. This was the right place.

"This is it," she said simply.

"You sure?" Her companion asked. His fractured skull had probably done nothing for his intelligence, but Blake wasn't harsh enough to point it out. "Y'know, I'm just gonna take your word for it."

There were a few guards outside to usher new recruits in, but somehow they didn't recognise her. Most probably they were newer personnel, inducted into the White Fang after she had left. One of them hollered "New recruits, keep to the right!"

That was exactly what they did, securing the white half-masks onto their faces as they did. They were blank examples without any red decorative markings, which served to mark them out as initiates.

"I don't get it," Sun suddenly announced, tapping the mask on his face. "If you believe what you're doing is right, why hide who you are?"

"The masks are a symbol. Humanity wanted to make monsters out of us, so we chose to don the faces of monsters."

"Grimm masks…" Sun mulled slowly. "That's kind of dark."

"So were those who started it," Blake curtly replied, adjusting her own mask as she did.

She didn't bother to listen to Sun's inane reply, instead of focusing on the scene around her. There were a few dozen prospective recruits, maybe reaching a hundred in total. Most of them would qualify to become qualified combat personnel after basic military training. Maybe one or two of these recruits would manage to become elite soldiers if they passed the selection tests, but it was more likely that they would wash out. Former military or police officers had a better chance, but even then elite White Fang soldiers weren't regarded to be just one level below such esteemed groups as Vale's Foreign Legion or Atlas's Waffen SS for nothing.

However, those numbers were eclipsed by the hundreds upon hundreds of hooded and masked soldiers that filled the warehouse itself and the balconies to the side. There was a large banner behind a stage, emblazoned with the side of a snarling wolf's head in front of three parallel claw marks. There was an absolute unit of a lieutenant on the stage, his arms covered with the distinctive tattoos that marked him out as her former colleague Banesaw.

"Thank you all for coming," Banesaw said, his booming voice carrying the simple sentence further than any shouting could. "For those of you who are joining us for the first time tonight, allow me to introduce a few very special comrades of ours! I can assure you, they are the key to obtaining what we have fought for for so long!"

Three familiar figures walked out from behind the banner, two welcome and one unwelcome. One was an armoured knight, her claymore still sheathed on her back. The other cut a very unfamiliar figure, seemingly exchanging his heavy armour and rebreather for the attire of an Atlesian Gestapo officer. In his hands was a heavily customised submachine gun, and one hand's trigger finger rested over the trigger guard while the other was wrapped around a forwards vertical grip.

The unwelcome figure walked out with confidence radiating off of his person, dark pants and brown leather moccasins strutting forwards before the orange tip of his cane tapped onto the stage. Roman Torchwick stood on the stage, seemingly revelling in the undisguised hatred that a large portion of the crowd was showing at his presence.

"Thank you, thank you!" He said, waving mockingly at the crowd as he did. Behind him, a fourth person - a girl with multi-coloured hair that Blake had never seen before - walked out from behind the banner. "Please, hold your applause!"

"What's a human doing here?" A Faunus with deer antlers asked angrily, next to her.

"I'm glad you asked, 'Deerie'," Roman replied smugly, before a vicious jab to the ribs from the butt of Noctis's submachine gun staggered him. Blake didn't know how he managed to do that with a telescoping stock, and frankly she didn't want to know.

"Sorry, force of habit," Noctis said, calmly returning Roman's angry stare with a dead stare of his own before the latter wisely stepped back and backed down. The criminal looked slightly afraid, for once.

"Now, I'll be the first to admit, humans are the worst. Case in point," Roman continued, gesturing at himself. "So, I understand why you would like to see us all locked away, or, better yet, killed!"

"Holy shit, was that Noctis? Didn't know that he was Gestapo, but it makes sense in retrospect," Sun wondered aloud. "Is Roman going somewhere with this?

"But, before the claws come out, I'd like to mention the fact that you and I all have a common enemy: the ones in control, the people pulling the strings, the dirty, rotten humans that run our kingdoms!" Roman yelled, gesturing as he did. For all the problems he represented and perpetrated, at least he was a good orator. The crowd's cheering supported that point. "Government, military, even the schools: they're all to blame for your lot in life! And they're all pests that need to be dealt with! Fortunately, I'm the best exterminator around… No offense to any rodents in the room," he quickly added in response after another glare from Noctis.

He then snapped his fingers, causing the banner to fall down. Behind that banner was a massive armoured battle-mech of some kind, armed with massive cannons and missiles and other weaponry that Blake couldn't identify. In case the rapturous applause of the crowd wasn't enough to inform her of the mech's purpose, the White Fang emblem was painted on its shoulder.

"Whoa, that's a big robot," Sun remarked.

"How the hell did he get that?" Blake asked herself, all other emotions replaced by shock. What other military assets had the White Fang managed to pilfer with Roman's help, and how many?

"As some of you may have heard…" Roman began, waiting for the crowd to quieten down. "This right here is Atlas's newest defense against all the scary things in the world. And thanks to my "employer", we've managed to snag a few before they 'hit the shelves' so to speak. Now, many of your brothers have already moved down to our new operation in the southeast. If you'd rather stay within the city, that's fine. I won't blame you, especially since we're still cleaning the stains of the place's very _colourful_ history off of the walls. But if you're truly ready to fight for what you believe in, this is the arsenal I can provide you. Any questions?"

"We need to leave," Blake hurriedly said, grabbing Sun's hand. " _Now_."

"Will all new recruits, please come forward!" Banesaw boomed. The line surged forward, taking Blake and Sun with it.

"Shit," Sun muttered. "We're stuck here, it seems."

"Then let's just hope that we get out of this alive," Blow replied, squeezing Sun's hand tighter. It was warm.

/-/

It was nine in the evening, according to the chronometer on Carmine's gauntlet. She had done this a few times before, on five or six prior occasions, but it was still an incredible hassle.

She waited inside one of the numerous dark side alleys of the industrial district. It was one of her usual spots, with a complete lack of security cameras and a conveniently placed dumpster-like chute that lead into somebody's furnace. A few backdoors belonging to some doubtlessly irreputable establishments served as the only possible source of witnesses, but so far there seemed to be no one home. Her situation was most probably unique among probably the entire city's population, but barring the feeding it was almost guaranteed that other poor souls had already lost their lives in this very alley.

Outside the alley were a group of what her father would call out as 'ne'er-do-wells'; petty gangs of thugs, criminals and junkies that would prowl the street in search of people to rob at knifepoint and subsequently brutalise. They would hide out from the law in this particular alley, some of them shooting up with various drugs while others quaffed startling quantities of alcohol.

Once most of them were suitably tranquilised, she moved in for the kill. Carmine moved out of the shadows into the moonlight, unsheathing her claymore from her back as she did.

"The hell are you?" One of the thugs hollered, drawing a switchblade from the pocket of his jeans. "Looking for trouble?"

"Dear, oh dear, what was it?" Carmine asked softly, walking slowly towards them. The sword was resting on her shoulder - for now. "Greed, violence, or thy horrible addiction? Oh, it matters not. It always comes down to those who know the right way to clean up after these sorts of messes."

"What the fuck are ya talking about?" The foremost thug, a larger man with a baseball bat, barked. His group of four lackeys has started to shy away, especially when the moonlight had allowed them to see her sword.

"Tonight, this Reinhardt scion joins the hunt…" She drawled out, the primal hunger slowly coming to the fore. "And such upstanding men as yourselves… have the honour of being the quarry."

Too fast for the untrained eyes of the thugs to follow, Carmine lunged into a roll that put her in the middle of the group of criminals. One of them swung a crowbar at her head, and said swing was deflected with her zweihander before a horizontal slash across his stomach disembowelled him. Effective, yes, but the severe blood loss made him useless for her purposes.

"What the fuck?" The thug next to her target yelped, with said yelp devolving into terrified screams as she ended his friend's agony with a second beheading stroke.

Four more. She grabbed the screaming thug in a one-handed chokehold, lifting him aloft in her left hand while he writhed in her grip and tried vainly to swipe his switchblade at her, before throwing him bodily back to the ground in a chokeslam. She brought down her claymore in a downwards stab to end him.

Three more. The leader of the thugs stormed forwards, baseball bat held aloft. The knife-wielding thug was bringing up the rear with a lead pipe and a metal rubbish bin cover as a makeshift shield. The last surviving one, seemingly unarmed except for a broken bottle at his feet, was banging on a door to the side.

"Help us!" The thug screamed. "Help us!"

Luckily for all involved, there seemed to be no one behind that door. Carmine ignored him for now, instead deciding to focus on the two that were actively trying to neutralise her. She parried aside the baseball bat, before slashing into the thug leader's side and using the momentum from the blow to carry her past the now injured thug.

"Boss!" The lead pipe wielding thug yelled, backing away from his knightly assailant. "You okay?"

"I've had worse," the large man grunted, his hand cupping the wound. "Focus on _not dying_."

Carmine's off hand grabbed the makeshift shield, tearing the rubbish bin's cover out of the thug's grip before slapping him in the side of the head with it. The man being sufficiently staggered, she brought her sword diagonally down to cut him in half. The two asymmetrical halves flopped wetly onto the grimy concrete floor.

"The fuck do ya want?" The thug boss roared. "You come in here and cut my boys up, with neither rhyme nor reason? Only Grimm do that kinda thing, chap, and you ain't no Grimm."

"I am no Grimm," Carmine replied. "I am the one that slays them."

The thug boss started to laugh, hefting his bat onto his shoulder as he did. "Do I look like a Grimm to ya? No? Then go to hell!" He yelled, swinging the bat. Carmine dodged out of the way with a backwards roll, getting up before lunging forwards in a stab. The large man, too injured to dodge, ended up with the sword in his torso. He collapsed to his knees.

"W-Why?" The man coughed out. "Why me? Why my boys?" He turned his head to the one surviving thug, which was currently scrabbling among the dead for a weapon. Carmine noticed him as well, deciding to keep her for her own purposes.

"Simple. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Wha-" The thug boss began, before Carmine tore the blade out and lopped his head off to end his pain. She sheathed her sword, ensuring it was safe on her back before raising the visor of her helmet.

"Boss!" The last thug screamed, holding the lead pipe in front of him to ward off the knight. The pipe, Carmine noticed, was shaking.

"Your 'boss' is dead. Now, please drop the weapon. I require you to be unbruised and alive, lest all this ends up to be for naught."

"To hell with you!" The thug hollered, diving for the switchblade on the ground. Carmine knocked him away to the wall of the alley, wrenching the lead pipe from his hand as she did.

"What do you want?" He begged.

Carmine's arms pinned the thug to the wall, and the hunger began to become overwhelming. She moved in closer, almost rubbing bodies with the now terrified man. There was a faint odour of ammonia, and Carmine looked down to find a large wet patch on the thug's pants. She smiled, despite herself.

"Nothing too demanding." She chuckled, lifting the man up against the wall so that his torso was at her jaw level. "Just most of your body's biomass."

The man screamed as her mouth distended, her lips opening up and thrusting out to become a fleshy disk larger than a human hand. Although she couldn't see it, she instinctively knew that the insides of her lips were covered with small hook-like barbs with which her mouth could latch onto the skin of her victim and lock them in place. It was rather like opening her mouth normally to eat and drink, but somewhat different.

His screams became louder as her tongue, which had transformed into a bony lancet, tore a hole into his torso. A cocktail of enzymes rose up from her gut before they were regurgitated into the convenient hole, immediately beginning to digest body fat and muscle.

The process took several minutes, somewhere in which the man stopped struggling - in fact, he had stopped moving altogether - which allowed her to consume her meal in peace. Eventually, she detached herself from her victim and allowed her mouth to return to normal.

"I thank you for your sacrifice," Carmine muttered solemnly, hefting the man's body - now nothing more than an emaciated husk - over her shoulder and bringing him over to the chute. The euphoria of sated hunger faded rapidly and morphed into a sort of profound regret that she had long battled with. She pried the chute open, holding the cover up as she slowly fed the husk into it. Luckily for her, no one actually seemed to bother about whether the chute was locked or not. With the husk of the thug now out of the question, Carmine wiped her mouth to remove any remnants of dissolved biomass or enzymes off before bringing her helmet's visor back down.

The hunger was annoying to cope with and sufficiently sate, but it was expected; the Vilebloods had a reputation as vampires, after all. Biologically speaking, the process was rather simple. Feeding would drain the victim of their bodily fluids, leaving nothing but the indigestible skin and bones behind to be disposed appropriately. It was the theological aspect that was problematic.

Her father had summarised it by saying that the process essentially consumed the soul as well as soft biomass. Since the heart was dissolved along with everything else, and the theology of Cainhurst explicitly said that one's soul was housed in their heart, it wasn't a stretch to say that the soul had been consumed. With all the emphasis that Remnant put on how crucial one's soul was, and how she had inevitably picked up the idea… it was rather disquieting, to say the least. She reached for the comms system on her helmet, pressing and holding a button around where her left ear was.

"Ishmael to Ahab. It is done."

"Good. Don't tell me any of the sordid details, of course," Noctis replied, his voice eerily chipper. "Just get back to the AO. The party's about to start, and it ain't waiting for you."

Carmine huffed. She had long grown accustomed to Noctis's tendency to jump from almost impeccable professionalism to exhaustingly facetious banter in remarkably short spans of time, but that didn't mean that it wasn't annoying. "What is the situation like there?"

"Banesaw's body double has arrived," Noctis replied. Carmine's intentional silence eventually prompted him to elaborate. "Yeah, it's kind of a weird situation here. Banesaw has been playing this game ever since the White Fang set up shop here, and he's more cautious than most. Apparently he's actually the de facto leader of Vale's cell; Adam was originally meant to be only a liaison from the main cell in Menagerie. But since Sienna personally decided to put Adam on a pedestal, Banesaw's basically playing second fiddle now."

"I am sorry, what?" Carmine shot back, unintentionally gesturing with confusion as she did.

"Basically, the real Banesaw isn't here. The man with us today is a body double, trained and cosmetically altered to look like Banesaw in uniform."

Carmine sighed. "Okay, forget I asked. I will be back in… around ten minutes, give or take a few."

"Roger that. Take your time, shit isn't going to go down for a few hours at least. Over and out."

Carmine took her hand off of the comms, surveying the scene around her. Contrary to popular belief, the internal contents of one's body did not stay neatly inside their containers if dismemberment occurred. The two she had disembowelled and bisected respectively had spilled their innards all over the floor in their death throes, with numerous vital organs like the intestines gently steaming amid a still spreading corona of freshly shed blood. The fluids couldn't be helped, she reasoned, but anything even remotely solid would have to be cleaned up.

There was a shovel resting on a wall nearby. Remarkably, none of the five currently deceased had thought to use it as a weapon. However, it could help her to… clean up after herself.

Carmine took up the shovel, scooped up a generous serving of a dead man's intestines, and began the laborious process of transferring the copious amounts of solid gore to the incinerator chute.

/-/

According to Noctis's scroll, it was five minutes to eleven pm. Backstage was currently a mess of people getting ready for the rally, from ensuring that the sound system was working properly to making sure that the White Fang soldiers present were attired properly. Banesaw's body double, apparently a former actor from what small bits of conversation Noctis has managed to get from him, was currently memorising his speech. Noctis, for his part, had his que practically imprinted into his mind.

"Stage fright, eh?" A familiar voice rang out behind him, before a hand slapped his back playfully. Noctis span around to see Roman just behind him, the criminal smiling cheerfully. "Take it easy, Ahab. Liking the new look, though."

"...What?"

"My god. You might be one snarky son of a bitch, but you have no fashion sense whatsoever. I'm talking about your new look!" Roman gestured towards him. "You finally upgraded to leather!"

"Oh, right. _Those_ changes."

"Yet again, you prove me right," Roman shrugged. Noctis couldn't see her, but he assumed that Neo was somewhere behind Roman. His right hand snaked towards the handle of the sheathed stiletto fighting knife strapped securely to his left wrist, but he ignored the urge. "Just chill out, alright? I know that this ain't your first party, but stage fright gets everyone. Have you ever gone on stage before, for a play or something?"

"Yeah," Noctis replied, truthfully for once. Most of his early years had been split between normal schooling and combat training, but as he grew older he found the circumstantial call to arms irresistible. A school play was something that he had been exposed to, but not something that he particularly enjoyed or excelled at. "A school play. I was roped in to be the main character by some childhood friends of mine."

"Then draw on those skills. Not too much, mind you. I'm still playing the lead role, after all."

Noctis rolled his eyes. Hopefully the cap on his head meant that Roman couldn't see the offending facial gesture past the shadows that it cast, but he couldn't be sure. "Of course. Why would I distract from your villainous monologue?"

"What villain?" Roman replied, his voice breaking out into sniggering. "Do I look like I have a golden gun?"

The two of them broke out into laughter. Noctis's particular case was soon interrupted by a familiar armoured hand gently but firmly slapping the back of his head.

"Seriously?" Carmine asked, her voice carrying hints of annoyance. "Old film references? Now?"

"In his defence, that particular movie was pretty freaking ridiculous," Roman said. "No wonder he remembered it."

They were interrupted by the resident stage director, a fully attired White Fang lieutenant that quickly dashed over to them with clipboard in hand. Scales on her neck in an alternating red, yellow and black pattern revealed her to be a coral snake Faunus.

"What is it?" Roman asked, turning his head towards the stage director. "Are we starting soon?"

"We're starting now, in fact," she replied crisply. "It would be great if you and your bodyguards were to get ready to move out in a minute or two."

Noctis removed his sheathed sword from his side, transforming it into its submachine gun form as he did. "Alright, people! Don't forget your lines."

"You don't have any to forget," Roman snarked. Noctis, for his part, made sure that cap was set at a suitably jaunty angle. "But you're right. Let's break a leg!"

"Why not break everything else?" Noctis hollered back jovially.

"Hear, hear." Carmine echoed behind them.

/-/

It was ten minutes past eleven pm, according to the clock mounted on the far side of the warehouse. Noctis was currently surveying the gaggle of new recruits with as much scrutiny as possible, holding his submachine gun at the ready as he did. It couldn't be. Two familiar faces among the throng, but it couldn't be true…

"Ahab to Ishmael," Noctis said into his comms bead. "The cat and the monkey. Do you see them too?"

"Yes, unfortunately," Carmine replied. In his opinion, she seemed rather eerily calm about the whole thing. "But you know what we must do. Their presence changes nothing."

"It changes nothing…?"

"This is your _duty_ , my leader. You wish to safeguard your country, yes?"

"I'm a Mistralian citizen, for God's sake."

"Then consider it protecting your own via protecting others. We have a job to do, and nothing changes that."

"Are you sure? We could warn them, Carmine. We _should_."

"What if Roman sees you communicating with them? We cannot risk having our cover blown."

The recruits were now at the very front of the crowd, standing ready for what was, for most of them, their very first inspection. "Do you see them?" Noctis asked.

"They are around the front of the crowd," Carmine replied. "We need to act, lest the target recognises them."

Noctis transformed his submachine gun back into his sheathed cane-sword, stowing the sword at his side before allowing the detonator to unfold into his right hand. "Very well," he muttered. "When shall we act?"

"Not yet, but soon," Carmine evenly replied. Noctis noticed the shimmer of distorted light appear over her left wrist, soon realising that she had activated her wrist-mounted energy shield.

"When?" Noctis snapped. His suppressed pistol unfolded and collapsed into his left hand, his right hand already sliding in a fresh twelve-round magazine. He then moved over to a window overlooking the streets outside, mentally setting up a point within range to teleport to before the charges went off.

He glanced down into the throng once more, and by pure chance he managed to lock eyes with Blake. Sun was by her side, but he wasn't important. Noctis subtly flinched, silently reminiscing about how _hard_ it was to commit to this.

It was much harder to kill someone, Noctis concluded, if you knew their name and face. It was that much harder to snuff out a human existence once you knew how important that existence was to other people whom you knew.

"My leader, are you okay?" Carmine asked, looking straight at him. Noctis realised that the hand holding the detonator was shaking. His face suddenly felt damp, especially the area under his eyes. "You are crying."

"Shit," Noctis muttered, subconsciously trying and failing to wipe his eyes with his gloved hands. "Was it that obvious?"

"Not really," his partner admitted, subtly handing him a silk handkerchief. It was the same handkerchief she used to polish her sword - the very same sword that she sometimes _stabbed herself with_ , and the very same sword that he had seen covered with an eye-covered _tumour_ of writhing flesh numerous times - but the gesture was appreciated. "Having been around you for an extended period of time, I was just able to tell."

"Dammit. It's just that…"

"We can do nothing. If we warn them, our cover is blown. If we help them escape, our cover is blown. There is no way out for us, much less for them."

Noctis sighed, gritting his teeth. He surreptitiously dabbed at his eyes with the handkerchief before handing it back to his partner. "Very well."

His internal diatribe was interrupted by absolute chaos breaking out below the stage. There was a gunshot, one that hit a nearby circuit board and plunged the entire warehouse into darkness. Noctis immediately sprang into action, teleporting down into the panicking crowd. He brandished his suppressed pistol with abandon, allowing him to make his way through the throng of terrified Faunus.

"Stop them!" He heard Roman yell. Carmine was currently utilising the chaos to slip out of the warehouse, while Neo remained at Roman's flank. All going to plan, at least. Noctis activated his own comms bead, switching to the general channel that included the comms of the facility's assigned security.

"Lock down the entire building," he instructed. "No one goes in or out until I say so."

"Roger," the security detail's captain replied. "My men _will_ comply."

"Excellent. Remind them that I will _personally_ be dealing with any insubordinates. They know what to expect if they fail to follow orders."

"A bullet to the head. I know very well."

"So make sure you don't screw up," Noctis snapped, shutting off the comms. He forced his way through the stampeding horde with his pistol in front of him, thankful for the sheer intimidation value of firearms in general. Surprisingly enough, he didn't even have to discharge his weapon.

"Sun! The window!" He heard a female voice yell beside him. Excellent. He had found his target.

"Blake…" Noctis said, his tone becoming one of resignation. He levelled the pistol, pointing it squarely at her right hand - the one holding Gambol Shroud.

"Noctis?" She replied, turning to him. Noctis armed the charges, already turning his head to get a line of sight through the window. Little red lights began to appear on every single column, the detonators activating and waiting for the signal from the device in his hand. "What are you doing?"

"For the record... I am so, so sorry about this," he said, finality permeating every word he said. He pressed the detonator, teleporting away and through the window to the safety of the prearranged rendezvous spot.

A familiar gauntleted hand grabbed his shoulder, steadying him. Noctis immediately dived to the ground while Carmine's energy shield - a larger rectangular version, that is - manifested in front of the two of them, taking the brunt of the massive shockwave that buffeted them. A massive plume of dust and smoke erupted in front of them, engulfing the stricken building. Noctis's ears rang from the sonic boom and shockwave of displaced air, but even that couldn't distract him from the reality that he had perpetuated.

He had just committed a _war crime_.

 _"To take the lives of one million people, five thousand kilometres away, with my very own hands... Pyrrha, your little bit of heaven will not be a lonely one."_

 _"Captain?"_

 _"What are you waiting for? Fire!"_

This was his first, but it wouldn't be his _last_.

Noctis's ears didn't stop ringing. The tears didn't stop running. The whispers in his head didn't stop.

Even after the shockwave had passed, long after the warehouse had finished crumbling, Noctis found himself unable to rise from his kneeling position. All he could do was remain on his knees and sob. Big heaving sobs, uncaring about his partner who had wisely deigned to say anything. All she did was place a hand on his shoulder, at least to comfort him.

/-/

Icarus saw everything through the lens of his rifle. He watched the warehouse collapse in its final death throes, and he knew that the job was done. Despite the jammer cutting off comms for the entire area, he knew that his teammates would probably be at the rendezvous spot.

His jump boots burst into life, lifting him aloft from his temporary sniper nest. He searched for his teammate, hovering in the air for around a minute, before he found a distinctly heavily armoured shape in the streets below. Icarus cut off the power at a suitable height, low enough to avoid injury but high enough so that he landed with a suitably dramatic clank on impact.

"Cool. You finally nailed it," Lapis quipped. Her armour's helmet was retracted, hidden in the large bulk that protected her neck rather like a gorget, so Icarus could see the humorous grin that had broken out. "So it's done?"

"The warehouse is no more," Icarus stated, a small smile of triumph on his face. He had actually practised making landings like those for a few weeks now, and this was one of the better attempts. The swirling of his ghillie cloak only improved the end result. "Shall we get going, then?"

He ignited his jump boots yet again, already starting to fly over to the rendezvous point.

"Yeah. We should," Lapis replied simply, starting to walk after him.

Whatever he had been expecting, Icarus thought, it was definitely not _this_. Noctis was curled up in a corner, crying his eyes out. Carmine was trying to comfort him, but she looked about as distressed as she could possibly be.

"What happened?" Icarus asked, directing the question to the more composed of the two.

"Blake and Sun were at the rally," Carmine said, her voice thin with stress. "You know what that means."

"What the fuck?" Icarus blurted out. "So you just blew them up?"

Carmine pushed him away from the location of their shell-shocked leader, shoving him against a wall. "We did not _just_ blow them up. What, do you think we _wanted_ things to come to this?"

"So you couldn't have, I don't know, warned them? Kicked them out of the place, perhaps? Why in the fucking hell did you just leave them in there-" He gestured at the smouldering wreckage that was still within view. "-to die?"

"We had no choice!" She exploded, before visibly recoiling when a gloved hand grabbed her arm.

"That's enough, Carmine. I placed and set off the charges, so that's my cross to bear. Let me handle this," Noctis said quietly, wiping his eyes as he did.

"You… were the one who did _that_?" Icarus asked, pointing a trembling hand at the destroyed warehouse. "Blake and Sun were in there. Emphasis on _were_."

Noctis stared at him for a while before he moved his left hand from behind his back, revealing the suppressed pistol gripped in his prosthetic fingers. He idly inspected the pistol before turning it over in his hand, soon afterwards making a motion as if he were about to raise it before reining the impulse in. "Do you remember what I said during the mission briefing?"

"About not accommodating rogue elements? I remember hearing you, but I never _acknowledged_ you," Icarus spat out, jabbing a finger at Noctis's chest. "Not helping them is one thing, but this? This is too much."

"Were you not an assassin, Icarus?" Carmine snidely asked from the side. "You should know above all that sometimes lives must be lost for the greater mission to succeed."

Icarus stared at her for a while before bursting into cynical laughter. He let out more than a few hearty chuckles before controlling himself. "Oh, I see what's going on now."

"What?" Carmine snapped.

"That our leader is a _coward_ hiding behind a mission!" Icarus yelled, grabbing the front of Noctis's greatcoat. Even that didn't save him, though, when a massive gauntleted hand that most probably belonged to Lapis grabbed his shoulder and pulled him away. Noctis looked at him, then looked down at the gun in his hand. The gun's muzzle twitched towards the side of his head, but he appeared to reign in the impulse.

"Carmine, catch," Lapis said, tossing what appeared to be a medical kit to her. "Ten millilitres injected intravenously into a vein. It's the stuff in the bottle, the one with the blue label."

"Who is this for?"

"You know what? Give it to both boys, but remember to use different sterile needles."

"Of course I know to do that. You seem to keep mistaking my being new to your world for simple idiocy."

Icarus struggled against the iron grip on his shoulder, but to no avail. Carmine prepared the first dose and administered it on Noctis, the latter almost limply offering up his right wrist while he leaned on a nearby wall to do so. Before long, though, it was Icarus's turn.

"What is this, anyways?" Carmine asked, looking at Lapis.

"It's a little something that our boys in the Legion came up with. It essentially neutralises hormones, most importantly cortisol. Cortisol is a hormone produced by your body that's released in response to stress, and what we've deduced is that it increases brain metabolism. Ever found your mind racing under stress which ended up in you panicking? That's because of cortisol."

"So this allows for calm, rational thought in stressful situations?"

"That's basically it. It's pretty situational, though, since taking it too often results in hormonal deficiency. Not a good thing, especially if too much or too little in the way of certain hormones can royally fuck your body up," Lapis replied, grabbing Icarus's arm and forcing it to the side. "Just inject it in his wrist or something. Relax, he's wearing his tweed suit. Pull up the sleeve, and there we go."

Icarus's struggles increased as the needle entered his wrist and delivered its payload, but decreased as soon as the hormone neutraliser did its work. Lapis let him go when he had stopped fighting completely.

"You'd better have your head screwed on straight now," Lapis growled, only half joking. "Unless you'd like me to hit you over the head until it is."

Icarus breathed deeply, trying and failing to regain his previous anger. He'd promised himself that he'd protect Blake, and he'd utterly failed.

There was some newfound optimism, though. Perhaps Blake and Sun were just trapped under the rubble, waiting for rescue crews to extricate them. The lack of a stirring Paladin battle mech meant that they were safe for now, at least.

"What was that for, anyways?" Noctis asked, off to the side. He also sounded much more composed than earlier, wherein he had visibly been holding in his emotions. The pistol retracted back into his arm, and the still full magazine was shoved back into a pouch. "The drug, I mean. What's it for?"

"Basically it keeps soldiers like us sane enough to reach somewhere with proper facilities for psychiatric care. We can't have operators snap in the field, like what literally _just_ happened," Lapis huffed.

"This isn't over," Icarus said, pointing at Noctis. The latter stared at him in response, seemingly from a misguided sense of defensiveness.

"Like hell it-" Noctis began, before flinching at a sudden burst of red light from the sky. Before long, there was the telltale crack and rumble of thunder.

"What the hell?" Icarus muttered under his breath. "Lightning isn't usually red."

"There is _no_ possible way that that storm is natural," Carmine said urgently, pointing at the massive rotating storm clouds above. They reminded Icarus of the typhoons that occasionally pounded the eastern areas of Mistral where he had spent his childhood, except for the streaks of _red_ lightning that occasionally lit up the _pitch black_ clouds above. "Clouds are never black, only grey. And lightning is almost certainly never red."

"Shit!" Lapis suddenly exclaimed. "My suit's detecting vibrations in the ground, and they're getting faster."

"Then what the hell are you waiting for?" Icarus yelled, gesturing at his partner. "Everyone, get above ground _now_!"

Icarus immediately leapt into the air, his jump boots keeping him aloft. Noctis settled for teleporting onto one of the rooftops, while Carmine was forced to rely on the ladder of a fire escape.

"You okay down there?" He hollered at Lapis.

"Yeah, I'll be fine. The vibrations aren't in any particular direction at all, so nothing's burrowing underground," Lapis replied, before she paused. "You've gotta be kidding me, mate. Is everyone else above ground?"

"Yes."

"Great, because… seismic vibration spike in 3, 2, 1… impact!" She yelled, just as the earth began to tremble. Over at the warehouse, which was currently blocked by a few buildings thanks to the orientation of the streets, a massive plume of _black fire_ erupted from the ground and rose far into the boiling skies above.

"Black fire…" Noctis trailed off, his tone one of genuine shock.

"The Wyrm is here, in Vale," Lapis concluded grimly.

Then, the warehouse exploded into kindling and smouldering debris. A massive draconian form burst out of the foundations of the building with a deafening roar of triumph, six glowing yellow eyes cutting streaks of light through the darkness as it rose up and up into the skies.

The long, high pitched wail of Vale's sirens started to echo throughout the city. It was the very same wail that everyone in Remnant was taught to fear above all else, the sepulchral banshee wail that foretold of nothing but death, sorrow and madness. The warning sirens of a S Class alert pierced the ears of Vale, the entire city seeming to scream with terror as the Grimm Troupe made its presence known.

Lapis scrambled for the medical kit, grabbing the blue bottle and a fresh syringe before injecting dose after dose of the hormone neutraliser into her wrist.

"Lapis!" Noctis yelled. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine! It's just… the Troupe and I have a history."

"I know! Just don't let them get to you, okay?"

"Got it," Lapis said, her voice sounding much calmer now. "Just cover me."

"Wait, what?" Icarus spluttered, already flying into a suitable position to observe the situation through the scope of his rifle. "What are you doing?"

"Going to ground zero," Lapis said, the rockets on the back of her armour flaring into life to propel her forwards. "The Troupe owe me blood, and I sure as hell haven't buried the damn hatchet."

The Dragon flew up into the storm, but it didn't come out. It took Icarus about a minute to reach the warehouse, and by the time he had reached there the storm was already dissipating at an alarming rate.

"Holy shit. This place is a wasteland," Icarus swore. He was right. The entire floor had caved in, revealing a hidden basement where the Wyrm had probably been kept. There was too much debris to identify specific things from afar, but Icarus thought that he saw twisted chunks of metal wreckage scattered around the place. "Is this your work, Noctis?"

"What work?"

"I'm seeing metal scrap all over the place. Did you get the Paladin as well?"

"Sort of. I stuffed the thing with a few demolitions charges before this whole clusterfuck kicked off. You're telling me that they actually blew the whole thing up? That's fucking weird... I only put three inside, and I'm damn sure that they aren't powerful enough to blow open a walking tank."

"Well, you certainly did a number on the damn thing."

"We don't have time for idle chitchat. Any visual contact on survivors? Point them out to me if you see any, so I can help get them out," Lapis instructed, cutting the exchange off. "Noctis, I need you to watch the perimeter. Make sure that nothing suspicious is happening where we can't see it."

"Roger," his leader replied.

"What do I do?" Carmine asked.

"Get emergency services here asap. Fire engines, ambulances, cops, the whole kit and caboodle. This black fire spreads like crazy when exposed to organic matter, and I don't want to risk another blaze like what happened in Valhalla."

"What exactly happened in Valhalla?" Noctis asked.

"That's a story for another day. Right now all we need to do is focus on making sure history doesn't repeat itself."

Icarus lowered his altitude, now hovering only a few metres above the devastation. There were quite a few bodies strewn about, but thankfully no one he recognised had been found yet.

"No one so far that we should be concerned about," he reported. "Still haven't managed to check under the rubble, though."

"Shit. I've found them," Lapis suddenly burst out. "Blake's pinned and conscious, but Sun…"

"What happened?" Noctis asked, his tone becoming somber once again.

"He's been crushed. Huge piece of rubble, probably a few tons, and the only bits of him that are sticking out is his hand and tail. Blake's alive and… not so well. Noctis, I need the medical kit."

"Anything in particular?"

"There will be a bottle of yellowish liquid with a red label. That is a fast-acting barbiturate sedative, sodium thiopental to be precise. Get me that and a sterile syringe."

"Roger that. En route now."

Icarus dropped to the ground beside Lapis, this time not bothering about his landing. The situation was about as bad as Lapis had described it, with a large piece of rebar pinning the still conscious girl's legs to the ground. Sun, on the other hand, had entirely vanished underneath a massive chunk of concrete save for his tail and one stray arm which still grasped Blake's own. One side of the concrete was almost completely charred, indicating that this was probably the Wyrm's work.

"Shh… it's okay, you're safe now," he heard Lapis mutter, his partner trying to calm a clearly shell-shocked Blake.

"We hear him… he haunts the shadows, reaches up to the skies with a blood-stained tongue… the eyes of the Troupe are upon ye…" Blake rambled, her gaze unfocused. Her voice was set to a frightening monotone, as if her soul had fled her body. "Cursed are those who defy him. The very moon is his, a baleful eye with which he watches Remnant and laughs. The laughter… oh, that mocking laughter… how it echoes endlessly through the void..."

"Noctis, where are you?" Icarus urgently said into the comms. The jammer seemed to have been rendered inoperable, but he supposed that it had managed to fulfil its purpose. "She's going into shock. Hurry up with those tranquillisers."

"I'm here," Noctis said, materialising right next to him. "Here are the sedatives. Do you want me to help you administer them? How much do you want me to inject?"

"Eight millilitres should be enough. Now, get on with it," Lapis waved him on, allowing him to fill a syringe with the barbiturate solution before deftly injecting it into Blake's system. Soon enough, she easily lulled into unconsciousness. Noctis sighed deeply, still clearly stressed. His eyes were bloodshot.

"Do you have any idea what this means?" Icarus's leader said frantically, gesturing wildly as he did. "Roman was working with the Grimm Troupe."

"More like the White Fang were working with them," Carmine chipped in. "After all, so many soldiers could hardly have not noticed such a vast beast."

Icarus pondered for a while, drawing mental links between past events until he came to an absolutely horrifying conclusion. "Guys, I just realised something."

"What?" Lapis replied.

"Roman was working with the Troupe, as well as the White Fang. Roman and the White Fang are planning a coup d'état. I don't think that that's a coincidence."

"But if it isn't, then…" Lapis began.

"The Grimm Troupe for some reason want the coup d'état to happen. They are behind it," Noctis concluded.

"But why, though?" Lapis asked confusedly. "The last time they did anything of the sort was in Valhalla, and they attacked Valhalla precisely because it was so well defended. Vale would be a cakewalk in comparison."

"There is always Beacon Academy," Carmine reminded them. "Perhaps that was the deciding factor."

"But why, though?" Noctis asked. "If they wanted to attack an Academy, why not Atlas? It has a Huntsman academy as well, and that's not considering its massive military as well."

"There must be something special at Beacon that the other Academies don't have. Even so, something like this is unprecedented. The Troupe never explicitly attacks Huntsman Academies."

"No, they don't. They only attack the cities they're attached to," Lapis grumbled. "It isn't about the death toll or damage caused, it's about how many traumatised and broken people they leave behind. They want chaos and madness, not pure destruction. It's more entertaining that way."

Noctis checked his watch. "We should get going. If the cops get here before we manage to disappear, we'll be detained for questioning at the very least."

"Most probably because _you_ were the one to cause this," Icarus shot at him.

"Excuse me, but how the fuck was I expected to know that there was a fucking _dragon_ under the fucking floor?"

"Enough!" Lapis ordered, her voice raised. "Icarus, chill the fuck out. Noctis, you chill out too. We'll iron this shit out when we're safe at Beacon."

He wanted to argue, but it appeared that a cat - no, a pissed off bear wearing power armour - had got his tongue.

/-/

"Do you honestly think that this will work?" Mihaly asked. They were currently camped out on top of a rooftop overlooking the collapsed warehouse, watching over the team that had somehow warranted the Troupe Master's loving care and affection. "They are naught but children, my lord. Trainees."

" _Of course, but them? They are special,_ " Troupe Master Grimm replied, his cloak of folded wings flapping in the wind. A skeletal hand wrapped with chitin emerged from the cloak, a single fingertip glowing with power sketching a symbol into the air with scarlet energy. " _Do you recognise this sign, Fenrir_?"

Mihaly moved closer. The rune looked like an upside-down trident, the points tapered inwards to all point at a dot on the bottom of the symbol. "No, my lord."

" _This? The uttering of a Great One, etched into one's mind. The symbol of a Hunter._ "

"One of them is a Hunter?" Mihaly asked, his tone one of incredulity. "Do you understand how dangerous that is?"

" _Their leader - he is not just any hunter, but a special hunter; a Paleblood Hunter, one bound to the Dreamlands. **My** Dreamlands. He is bound to me, just as I am bound to him_."

"If he's connected to the Dreamlands, why can't you just control him? You control shoggoths, hunting horrors, even nightgaunts. Don't tell me that a simple human is beyond your control."

" _We are bound by contract. A contract that had fine print so inscrutable that it was probably written by Azathoth. For all his abilities, I literally cannot influence him beyond just pointing him in the right direction._ "

"So much for being the Crawling Chaos," Mihaly snarked.

" ** _Watch your tongue_** _. Even some things are untouchable to my kin, unfortunately._ "

"Truly a tragedy."

" _My efforts will not be wasted, though. He is my personal project. The Wyrm told me of the names he would yet earn. Have you heard of Moby Dick, maybe even read it?_ "

"Yes, I have read it. It's quite the tale."

" _You have just seen Captain Ahab._ _I expect much of this one. However, that will not be for quite a while._

"I trust your judgement, my lord. But on another note, will the girl deliver the message? Humans, especially ones as young as her, tend to be rather unreliable."

" _I seared it into her mind._ "

"In what form?" Mihaly asked, dreading the response.

" _This one, of course, minus the extra chitin._ "

The forehead of Mihaly's wolf-like helmet met a gauntlet of bone. "You're telling me that you appeared to her as The Haunter of the Dark? Okay. Despite your usage of a _giant three-lobed eye_ to get the message across, at least you used one of your more tame forms."

" _That was the point._ "

"Fine. She probably isn't insane, just in shock. The Wyrm probably didn't help matters as well."

" _The methods matter not, but the results do. You have to admit that it worked, somewhat,_ " Troupe Master Grimm intoned. It shrugged.

"Are you sure that they will understand? That's the most important part of this plan you have."

" _Give them time. They are only human, after all._ "

"That's the problem," Mihaly muttered. "Humans bring in unreliability, a randomness to things that simply can't be countered."

" _But that randomness is their strength. Why bother playing chess at all if you know how the game will play out?_ "

"You and your chess metaphors," Mihaly grumbled, rolling his eyes. "Seriously, this isn't just a board game. The pawns have fangs."

" _Of course they do, but what could they do? A little prick on the finger? They are irrelevant, **insignificant**. All I need them to do is be at the right place at the right time._"

"As we should, my lord. The longer we stay here, the more likely it is that we shall be noticed. I can hear police sirens already."

" _Very well. So we take our leave,_ " Troupe Master Grimm said, creating a circular disk of scarlet energy in the air. A rip in space-time, as it were. " _We shall lay low… for now. The show must go on, after all._ "

"Is our task here done?"

" _Yes. Now all we need to do is wait. The fuse has been lit, and the powder keg is ready to explode,_ " Grimm said, already going through the portal.

Mihaly followed after the Troupe Master, entering the portal before it shut behind him, but he couldn't get rid of the nagging feeling that he was naught but a simple child following the Pied Piper.

 **(It's honestly a shame that I couldn't shoe-horn in a fight with the Paladin... but with the amount of prior knowledge that team NICL has, it'll be doing them a disservice to say that they wouldn't be smart enough to sabotage it. Let's see how the funeral goes...)**


	23. Quietly into the Night

**(I am so** **sorry that this took so long! There are multiple reasons/excuses, including writer's block, having to study for exams - le gasp - and just not being in the right state of mind. Well, never mind. It's late, but it's here.)**

Blake woke up to the sensation of something crushing her hand. There were tremors running through the ground beneath her, and for some reason it felt much hotter than she would have expected. As her senses returned one by one, the scene she was in gradually started to become clearer. She tasted the metallic tang of blood in her mouth, and reflexively swallowed before realising exactly why there was blood in there. When her sense of smell returned, though, all she could do was retch and cough.

The smell was… indescribable. It smelled like a barbecue gone horribly wrong, with the aroma of some kind of meat cooking mixing with the acrid smell of burning plastic and circuitry. There was, something which Blake realised with a start, the characteristic tar-like smell of plastic explosives in the air as well. She began to struggle almost instinctively, but realised that there was something pinning her legs in place.

Her hearing returned next, ringing from what Blake guessed was the explosion of a bomb. Beyond that, the sizzling and crackling of flame drowned out everything else.

" _No, this one smells of the litter box,_ " a booming voice, too deep and bestial to be human, said dismissively. " _The one under the pebble would be better eating, especially with the fruity undertones it is bound to have. Tis unfortunate that it has gone stiff and tough._ "

" _Rigor mortis tends to do that,_ " a different voice, raspy and cultured, smoothly replied. " _But there is still the other one. Despite the… questionable aftertaste, I am sure that… oh._ "

" _What?_ " The deeper voice asked irritably.

" _It appears that she is alive. Witness for yourself that she is breathing._ "

" _So what? All the better for me; living ones tend to be juicier and more tender._ "

" _Forgive me, dear Wyrm, but I must ask you to abstain,_ " the raspy voice ordered, an almost imperceptible edge creeping in. " _I have a further use for this one._ "

" _Very well. I shall see whether any other of these morsels will be good eating._ "

" _Please, do not forget about the one that the Crow reserved for himself as stated in our agreement,_ " the more cultured voice ordered again. " _Unless you wish to have Cainhurst as an adversary? As of now it would be advisable for us to placate them._ "

" _Fine. I'll make sure to leave the one with the multi-coloured hair alone. You're the strategically minded one, after all. You do your job and I'll do mine._ "

" _As it should be. Good hunting._ "

Massive scratching footsteps signalled the departure of literally the second worst possible living thing to be around her as of now. The softer clacking of chitin warned of the entity that currently occupied the first place.

Blake held her breath, hoping to remain unnoticed and perhaps fool the Troupe Master into thinking that she was unconscious, but her hopes were dashed when the malevolent entity started tutting at her.

" _Pretending to be knocked out? Please, I'd like to see you try something more original. It's not as if I haven't seen this being pulled before,_ " the Troupe Master said mockingly. " _A great catastrophe to your kind has only just occurred, and you insist to shut it all out? Come, let me help you so you do not miss out on this truly eye-opening moment._ "

Blake heard the sound of chitinous fingers snapping, a burning pain all but engulfing her face until her eyelids jerked open. The first thing she saw was the face of the ultimate horror itself, a creature that countless Huntsmen had tried to kill but had all died trying.

"W-what the hell?" She found herself asking to no one in particular.

" _I assume that holding onto your bereavement would prove detrimental to the long run, but I shall leave it to you to form your own conclusions. Hand-holding begets indolence, after all._ "

"W-what are you saying?" Blake asked. The Wyrm was in the background currently inspecting the Atlesian Paladin that Roman had entered before the whole place had been demolished, and currently there was acrid smoke pouring out from seams in the cockpit. It was currently cautiously sniffing the crippled battle mech, recoiling slightly in barely disguised disgust when it caught a whiff of the burnt wires and plastic. She tried to turn to her left, trying to look at whatever was grasping it before cold insectoid hands grasped the sides of her head to hold it still.

" _Now, now, before you find out the rather distressing truth of your hand's holder… I need you to deliver a message._ "

"W-what do you want?"

" _Do you know a person with the last name of Argent?_ " The Troupe Master asked.

"Y-Yes."

" _Excellent. Tell him… Three. Three thirds. One is left at the precipice of a profane religion, sealed in a citadel of false hope. One waits at the end of a Nightmare, in the grasp of a newborn's wet nurse. One idles in the grasp of the mad doctor, to be retrieved only when the skies split and the cosmos tears itself apart._ "

" _This one isn't good eating. The explosives changed its flavour and texture profile, and not in a good way,_ " the Wyrm muttered almost sadly, snapping up the Paladin in its massive maw and shaking the battle mech like a ragdoll. The machine flopped around in the ivory clamp, bits and pieces of it flying off from the violent movements, before it tore itself apart under the strain. The Wyrm tossed the remainder of it aside almost contemptuously.

" _Stop playing with your food,_ " the Troupe Master snapped. " _I swear, sometimes I feel as if I'm leading a bunch of toddlers._ "

" _Well, this particular toddler can see the future. Have at thee, ye bloated harlot._ "

" _Oh, now that's a low blow. I'd rather you not confuse me with Ebrietas, though, since you know how much she detests being compared to my own majesty,_ " the Troupe Master replied smugly, before turning to Blake. " _My sincere apologies for this break in the usual professional veneer, my dear Belladonna._ "

"How do you know my name?" Blake asked, horrified.

" _I know a great many things, my dear. Things that would quite literally drive you insane if you learnt them, things simply beyond human comprehension. Although I cannot even begin to claim to be the most astute of my kind, I certainly know enough to do my job._ "

The Wyrm looked back at them, its quasi-reptilian expression inscrutable. " _We've humoured her enough. Shall we get going before the Valeans find us and bomb this place to dust?"_

" _Why not? You said it yourself, we shan't be meeting her again. I might as well give her a farewell before she meets Fenrir._ "

"What do you mean, a farewell?"

" _Ah, I forgot that you were here,_ " the Troupe Master said, turning to her with mirth in its scarlet eyes. " _I shall not give away the secret, Belladonna. Despite my numerous possibly glaring faults, I am not the kind of entity to give out spoilers._ "

" _That is enough,_ " the Wyrm snarled impatiently. " _Or are you incapable of taking anything seriously?_ "

" _Very well,_ " the Troupe Master said, shrugging dismissively as he did, " _Oh, one thing first, Belladonna?_ "

"What?" She snapped.

" _The fact that you can understand us…_ " The Troupe Master began.

" _Is because we have been humouring you this whole time,_ " the Wyrm finished.

" _We shall not be seeing each other again, so unfortunately this will be our farewell. My precognitive associate here is certain of that. But, before the end, tell Fenrir… I lied to him about his armour._ "

"Who the hell is Fenrir?" Blake asked. "What do you mean, before the end?"

The Troupe Master stared at her for a while, before starting to _change_. Chitin plates cracked open and fell to the ground, and flesh tore as it shifted into new positions and proportions. Scarlet eyes shone with mirth as the faceplate shattered and dropped to the ground in pieces, and inky black smoke-like bubbling vapour started billowing from where the chitin used to be.

Then, Blake vainly tried to scramble back as she took in the apparition before her. Where two baleful but otherwise normal eyes in a normal head and face had been was a single gargantuan three-lobed eye in place of a head that seemed to burn into her soul with its sickly yellow glow. That eye sat atop a massive bat-like body, from which tattered wings trailed a mass of writhing tentacles. It was a gargantuan creature, with a wingspan of at least fifteen metres, and right now it was looking at Blake with what appeared to be malevolent amusement in its one eye.

" _You may look to your left now,_ " a raspy voice whispered. It didn't seem to come from any specific direction but… it honestly seemed to be coming from in her head.

Blake looked left, and promptly began to scream. Sun's hand gripped hers in a crushingly tight death grip, and it was cold. His body was pinned under a massive slab of concrete, and the only way that Blake could identify him other than his stiffened hand was his monkey tail - his Faunus trait - which was mangled almost beyond recognition. One thing was certain, though.

Sun was dead.

Already her mind was reaching its breaking point; the whole thing with Noctis, having the _entire goddamn building_ they were in being blown to smithereens, getting a first-hand experience of the Grimm Troupe, _talking_ with the Troupe Master himself, and now this.

She had led him to his death.

Blake remembered her friend's bravado, swinging into their window and beaming with enthusiasm to help them. Sun and Neptune had pretty much insisted to help her team with this clusterfuck of an investigation, and where were they now? Sun was dead. Neptune was somewhere out there with Yang; they had never gotten the chance to send out a distress signal due to the explosion.

She remembered someone like him. An enthusiastic young lieutenant in the White Fang, a nice dog-eared boy only slightly older than her who was rising through the ranks with almost alarming speed. One of the more promising members she had ever met, to be honest. They had met in… Vacuo?

The memory of the place eluded her, probably since she had actively tried to redact from her mind what had happened there. Adam and her had been assigned to the Vacuan chapter of the White Fang as a sort of performance-boosting employee exchange - the Valean cell was performing much better than the one in Vacuo, and the White Fang's central administration in Menagerie wanted to bring the Vacuans up to speed.

She had learnt very quickly that the White Fang in Vacuo was not underperforming through any fault of their own; they were honestly much more acquainted with warfare than her compatriots in Vale. No, the reason they were having trouble was because they were tied up with the nascent Legion. Sure, the street gangs like the Diablos and the Traders were quite easily dealt with, but the Legion… they were a whole new beast. Much more better equipped than their usual adversaries, and with heavier hardware, they seemed more like a government-sponsored paramilitary force than anything else.

That boy she knew had died in Vacuo, ran through by the Auxilia's… no, _Lapis's_ lance.

God, it was still mind-blowing that the Hammer of the Legion, which she would come to be known as, was as chill with Faunus as she was. Lapis being a Faunus had been a revelation, to be honest, but it made sense in hindsight. 'Auxilia' denoted an auxiliary force serving alongside an official one, and fighting for the Legion while also not being an official Legionnaire meant that she was somehow unsuitable to join… the possibilities as to why weren't that hard to evaluate.

His face in death was just like how she imagined Sun's to be; confused and not knowing why they died.

When the mind looks inwards, it misses what goes on outside.

Blake never saw the two massive winged creatures take flight into a portal masked by a supernatural cyclone of their own making.

She didn't see the four figures stumbling through the rubble, marked one way or another by regret and guilt.

She also didn't notice the one with the metal arm break down into tears, utterly crushed by what he had been forced to do.

What she did notice though was the needle in her arm that finally brought her sweet release, if only for a moment.

/-/

The view was actually pretty nice, Noctis reflected. A balcony overlooked a verdant forest, and in the distance was a large mausoleum-esque building. Byrgenwerth College. His current objective, almost within reach save for one last obstacle.

"Remember me?" He asked, tapping the shoulder of an oblivious Alfred. The other Hunter nearly jumped out of his skin, drawing the longsword of his Kirkhammer as he did so. He spun around, seemingly automatically adopting a combat stance as he did so, but when he saw the truth of the matter he dropped the stance and narrowed his eyes.

"You bloody idiot, you nearly gave me a heart attack!" Alfred snapped, his voice already carrying his characteristic good humour. "What on earth is up with you?"

"The Vicar is dead."

"I know that. Well, at least what _was_ the Vicar is dead. But would you be so kind as to explain what happened with you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I saw you die and come back…" Alfred paused, before he started to count on his fingers. "Four times, I think. You got crushed, or shredded or bitten in half and you just materialised back on that church pew outside the Vicar's chamber before going back to try again."

"You know what they say," Noctis said, shrugging as he did. "If it doesn't work the first time, try, try again."

Alfred sighed. "I don't think you were meant to take that phrase literally."

"If it works, it works."

"Never mind. Anyways, see that building out there? Inside the forest? That is Byrgenwerth. It lies deep within a tangled wood, abandoned and decrepit. And furthermore, the Healing Church has declared Byrgenwerth forbidden ground."

"Forbidden ground?" Noctis asked. "So I'd be punished for even entering the place?"

"Under pain of death, yes. Ordinarily, I'd tell you not to even consider it. However, there are… extenuating circumstances that we must consider."

"Like the fact that your employer turned into a giant beast?"

"That's one of them," Alfred replied, his voice deadpan. "The Choir - the heads of the Church - have walled themselves in their citadel atop the Grand Cathedral, as they are wont to do. For all we know, the two of us might be the only Hunters left in the Cathedral Ward now."

"How about you? Do you have anything to say about this? You're a Church Hunter, after all."

"No, not really. I'm just a simple Hunter, and besides, I don't really have many ties to the Church itself."

"Then why do you work with them?"

"To free Master Logarius," Alfred said, suddenly turning to him with apologetic realisation. "Ah, I'm so sorry, I just realised that I forgot to tell you."

"It's fine," Noctis said, shrugging as he did. "You're quite the chatterbox anyways, so I have no doubt that you'd still be able to rattle it off now."

"I'll choose to interpret that as a complement," Alfred said, narrowing his eyes somewhat. "Anyways, here I go. Once, a scholar betrayed his fellows at Byrgenwerth and brought forbidden blood back with him to Cainhurst Castle. It was there that the first of the inhuman Vilebloods was born. The Vilebloods are fiendish creatures who threaten the purity of the Church's blood healing. The Ruler of the Vilebloods is still alive today. And so, to honor my master's wishes, I search for the path to Cainhurst Castle."

Noctis knew that he would succeed; if not, then why did Carmine detest his descendant so much? However, the original Arc seemed to be absolutely clueless as to how to reach his objective. Perhaps some input on his part was needed to allow him to reach Cainhurst.

But what would happen if he _did_ help? He still wasn't sure whether Yharnam was a simple construct of his mind or if it was actually the past. If it was the latter, then a huge can of worms was just waiting to be opened. If he killed Alfred now, would Jaune cease to exist? The potential for him to accidentally cause a time paradox was mindboggling and worrying at the same time. Hopefully he wouldn't meet an ancestor of himself or Pyrrha here. Suddenly having himself or her not existing would be… problematic.

"Then where does Logarius come in?" Noctis asked. "You've told me about the Vilebloods, but what happened to your master?"

"Oh, right. In his time, Master Logarius led his executioners into Cainhurst Castle to cleanse it of the Vilebloods. But all did not go well and Master Logarius became a blessed anchor, guarding us from evil. Tragic, tragic times…" Alfred dropped off sadly, before picking himself back up. "It's a travesty that Master Logarius should be abandoned in the accursed domain of the Vilebloods. I must free him, so that he may be properly honored in martyrdom."

"You know… I've heard a different version of that."

"Oh? Do tell."

Noctis tried to remember his conversations with Carmine, especially the parts about her home. Maybe all Alfred needed was a little inspiration… "What I heard was that Logarius managed to incapacitate the Queen, but her immortality-"

"She's immortal?" Alfred suddenly interrupted. "God damn it! No wonder we couldn't kill her."

"That's probably why. Anyways, Logarius couldn't kill the Queen properly. The blood of the Vilebloods has… special properties, which could even be considered magical. All of you were soaked in it, yes?"

"No, not really. The full Executioner uniform has full-body coverage, but Master Logarius never liked wearing it into battle. His skin needed to breathe, he said."

"And that's how he was imbibed with the blood's abilities. Since he couldn't kill the Queen, he sealed her away from the rest of the world. Preferably for eternity, of course, but you know how finicky such things can be."

Alfred looked despondent now. "So you're telling me that going to free my Master could actually render his sacrifice for naught?"

Shit. If Alfred didn't cripple the Queen, the subsequent ripples could be catastrophic. How would Cainhurst behave with an actual ruler at its helm? The Queen could potentially have a different idea of how diplomacy and public relations worked than the Bloody Crow. It would thus be best to keep the timeline consistent with the current reality.

"No, not at all!" Noctis lied. "Perhaps you'd be able to finish the job if you don't get contaminated along the way?"

"Perhaps…" Alfred mulled. He looked significantly more cheerful now, at least. "But for your own goals… it's unclear how many of Byrgenwerth's scholars remain alive, but only they know the password that allows passage through the gate."

"The password… you know, I think I might have an idea."

"What do you mean?"

"The skull on the cathedral's altar. That's Laurence's skull, right? The founder of the Church?"

"Yes."

"And the Church came about due to what the scholars of Byrgenwerth found in the labyrinth. Therefore, Laurence must have been from Byrgenwerth!" Noctis declared. His deduction hung in the air for a while, Alfred staring at him with the most exasperated look he had ever seen from the man, before his friend put his hand over his face.

"Tell me something I couldn't deduce for myself," Alfred said.

"Alright, fine. I had a vision when I touched the skull, and the phrase that stood out the most was 'Fear the Old Blood'."

"You touched the skull and had a vision?"

"That doesn't matter," Noctis said hurriedly, changing the subject. Even if Alfred wasn't the most loyal employee of the Church, he would probably still object to someone going up and laying a hand on a holy relic. "What matters is that we know the password. 'Fear the Old Blood' indeed."

"More like _you_ know the password. I can't go with you into the forest. Even if I lose my job after tonight, I still need to stay alive. My Master is depending on me to free him."

"Very well. See you around then, Alfred. I must get going soon."

"I bid you farewell. It has been a pleasure. May the good blood guide your way."

/-/

Sun's funeral had been a depressingly small affair. His body - at least, what could be salvaged of it - had been brought back from the morgue of Vale's General Hospital for a rather low-key ceremony in which his friends had paid their last respects. There was no family in attendance; the boy had had no surviving relatives. It was somewhat expected, given the state that Vacuo was in these days, but it still hurt. The hundreds of other people who were inside at the time made it even worse.

The fact that it had been her friend who had blown up the warehouse made it sting that much more. Or rather, someone who was previously her friend. Things had gone rather downhill between their two teams as of now, especially with what had happened with Blake.

To be specific, Blake was now warded in a psychiatric ward in Beacon's medical wing. She didn't need a straitjacket or a padded room or anything like that, but she was just… catatonic. Unresponsive to external stimuli. The doctors there said that she was recovering, that she'd eventually be back in fighting shape, but Yang wasn't so sure.

For once, she had a problem that she couldn't solve by punching it. Cardin didn't count; she could easily have solved it by beating him senseless, but Noctis has beat her to the punch. Right now he didn't dare mess with Jaune, which made sense if what Jaune himself had said about what Noctis had done was true. Dangling someone over a lethally high fall tended to make people reconsider their life decisions, after all.

One good thing she could say about Noctis, at least, was that the guy certainly didn't do things by halves. From bringing grenades to a bar fight like in their very first meeting to bringing a kitchen knife to a food fight, Noctis had a disturbing tendency to come out on top simply by escalating more than everyone else.

However, one thing he certainly did by quarters - not halves, quarters - was giving two shits about Port's class. At first, he had tried to learn something from the man like everyone else had, but now he seemed to default to the glazed-over state that everyone else adopted in his class after more than a semester in Beacon.

Noctis's head suddenly jerked upwards from the desk on which it had been resting. "Bloody snakes," he muttered, almost unconsciously, before flopping back down onto the desk to resume his slumber.

Yang glanced at him confusedly, before returning to the quasi-meditative trance that she had adopted for this particular lesson.

Honestly, she was fine with the way things were between them now. She could excuse him for the confrontation in the bar; she had all but caved in his chest with buckshot after all. Less so for the knife fight in the food fight. Even despite the frankly terrifying fight they had gotten into - her every move had never been dissected quite like that in a fight before - Yang had given him a second chance.

This time? Not so much. There wasn't much of an excuse for this kind of collateral damage. One of her friends was catatonic in a hospital ward for psychological shock, and the other was dead. God, it was still so hard to wrap her head around... Sun, _dead_.

Even if the reason was sound, the execution wasn't.

The ends do not, contrary to Noctis's own opinion, justify the means.

To put it simply, they were through. Now, if only she could muster up the bravado to tell that to him in person. Only an idiot would dare to poke a monster without a hiding spot to return to, after all.

/-/

Noctis found himself feeling thankful for the revolver Eileen had granted him. Sure, that shotgun-pistol that Gascoigne had left behind certainly didn't lack stopping power, but the ability to fire six shots of .455 'Manstopper' Webley rounds in quick succession was quite a significant improvement. That improvement was pretty much necessary if he were to make it through the Forbidden Woods.

The Forbidden Woods. It was more of a diseased swampy wasteland that probably had its water supply contaminated by the same blood that Yharnam had gotten addicted to, evidenced by the… unnatural life forms that populated the Woods.

Of course, he probably should have been warned by the nature of the gatekeeper. The gate had been more like a solid iron door, the mechanisms of which appeared about as secure as the door of a bank vault in Remnant. There had only been a small grille for one's voice to get through, and other than that there was no way for Noctis to see what was on the other side.

"What's the password?" A thin reedy voice, rendered reed-like by age, had asked.

"Fear the Old Blood," Noctis had replied.

The voice had started laughing, a cynical hissing sound characteristic of air being forced through a thin aperture, before it had faded away.

"Ah, forgive me," the voice said apologetically. "My first visitor in only Oedon knows how many years, and he gets the password right on the first try? I don't know how a hunter learned the password, but let me say this much. Down the embankment, beyond the forest, there it stands, old Byrgenwerth. But it's not what you think. They don't welcome newcomers, and their knowledge is better left untouched."

"Why? Did anything happen there?"

"I won't spoil the surprise," the voice said darkly, a hint of humour creeping in. "But I'll tell you this much. No, the old college is not what it once was. Those who enter, never return. At least, not as who they were upon entering. Don't say you weren't warned…"

"It seems that I have been," Noctis noted, his voice adopting a deadpan quality that Blake would have been proud of. "Now, would you mind opening the gate?"

"Go on, visitor. For that's what the master wishes of you. Sometimes, master's whims are most mystifying… I cannot stop anyone who knows the password. You are free to go."

With that, the door had opened. Noctis had walked through, turning to the left and subsequently recoiling in shock at what he saw there. There was a desiccated corpse behind the gate, decomposed and dried flesh exposing hollow eye sockets and a rictus grin, but the most alarming thing was that one skeletal hand, the flesh of which had long since rotted away, was still grasping the latch of the gate's lock.

"Interesting choice of doorman..." Noctis had said cautiously, drawing his revolver. There was a lantern next to the dead man, which Noctis decided to appropriate for his own purposes. This grisly discovery, he had felt in his gut, was only the tip of a very gruesome iceberg.

He had been correct. From white-robed Church Hunters that had attempted to kill him on sight with massive spear-esque saws or Tesla-coil maces crackling with sparks of electricity, to old corpses possessed and infested by snake parasites that erupted out of cloth-covered heads when he drew near, the Forbidden Woods was as dangerous as it was forbidding.

Noctis flung an oil urn into a congealed mass of mutated snakes, flash-stepping backwards to avoid the numerous fanged laws that lunged for him before he followed up with a Molotov. The resulting conflagration, while spectacular, certainly did the job admirably enough. The snakes hissed in agony, their tainted flesh sizzling in the flame to release noxious odours that soaked through even the blood-soaked scarf he was wearing.

There was some detritus of life in the forest, like abandoned wooden shacks and even a decaying windmill. To a discerning observer, it seemed that there was once an agrarian settlement of sorts in this place. The fact that the bones that he found in numerous opened graves were perfectly normal implied that whatever was mutating the populace and wildlife was relatively recent.

So _something_ had gotten into the groundwater; the filth seemed to originate from the swamps that dotted the woods. The close proximity of the Healing Church placed it as a direct suspect to this case of pollution, but what exactly was the pollutant? The signature healing blood of the Church, or something else?

He stumbled across a ladder. Out of a habit ingrained in him by his time in Central Yharnam, he grasped the rungs and started to climb.

The familiarity hit him even before he reached the top. He had a feeling that he'd seen the building he was climbing before, from another angle at least. A large white flag with a familiar red cross confirmed his suspicion; he was at Iosefka's clinic.

The ladder ended on what appeared to be the roof of the building, and hastily placed planks of wood made up a bridge spanning over the tiled slopes of the roof to a conveniently opened window.

"This is too easy," Noctis muttered, drawing his cane-sword and adopting a defensive combat stance. The whole setup reeked of an ambush, in his opinion.

The bridge was entirely exposed to the air, presenting anyone on it as easy prey for anything swooping down from above. The windows surrounding the whole place could easily house snipers that would gladly pick him off with impunity in his current position.

Luckily for him, he made his way into the clinic without incident. Despite his somewhat pessimistic expectation to be shredded by Gatling gun fire like in Old Yharnam, he hadn't been attacked yet.

The clinic was surprisingly filthy for a medical facility, Noctis realised with a not insignificant degree of disgust. He _had_ presumably been an inpatient of the clinic, after all. Books and loose pieces of paper littered the floor, strewn everywhere among the shards of glass from broken windows. Abandoned wheelchairs cluttered the hallways, hinting perhaps at the lack of nursing staff to keep the place tidy.

He reached down to pick up a piece of paper for further inspection, but flung it away when he realised that it was just some scientific gibberish. Research notes were useless if he didn't even know what research they were referring to.

The chandeliers were unlit, prompting Noctis to light his new lantern and secure it to his waist. At least now he had some measure of light, especially since the lack of proper lighting had reduced visibility to near zero where there were no windows to let in the moonlight.

The situation became even grimmer when he actually saw what kind of 'healthcare' was being administered here. Numerous emaciated cadavers were strapped to metal gurneys, the blood transfusion equipment still attached to them. From IV drips with bags long drained of blood trailed needle-tipped tubes that were still embedded in the veins of dead patients, and even the patients themselves hardly seemed to be fresh.

Even Noctis's basic forensic skills could easily determine that the newest corpse in the room was at least more than a week old. Deceased patients left on the surgical tables where they had breathed their last - did this accursed place not even have a morgue?

This was the new normal, he guessed. More decrepit and filthy hallways, and more medical wards filled with dead patients. Noctis progressed to the ground floor, his mind already racing with questions. If the real Iosefka was still in charge, had she lost her touch entirely? If it was an impostor, as he suspected, why did she show such disregard to even the most basic rules of running a legitimate medical practice? Maintaining a sterile environment to reduce the risk of infection was nothing new, after all.

Noctis started to wish that he had his submachine gun with him. Every corner he was forced to check threatened to hide hostiles, and the stopping power of his revolver would be pretty much irrelevant in the face of multiple adversaries. The ability to fire off bursts of 9mm AP rounds at whatever laid around the corner suddenly didn't sound so bad now.

However, even that thought was wiped from his mind when he entered the next room. There was a _thing_ inside the room, sitting on a gurney with its back turned to him.

A large gelatinous bulb of a head was borne aloft by a skeletal body that seemed much too small to support its head, and at the tips of its too-long fingers were what seemed to be fingernail-like claws. It was coloured a marine blue studded with dots of glowing turquoise on the head. The entire creature practically glowed with an unearthly turquoise light, but didn't seem to notice him.

"Hello?" Noctis called out to the being. "Can you understand me?"

The being turned towards him, two eyes glowing with the same turquoise light boring into his soul. It slipped off the gurney with a gelatinous sound, seamlessly turning its body towards him before starting to walk in his direction.

"Hello?" Noctis called again. This being was no beast, that was for sure. A beast would have smelled him long ago, and would have probably lunged at him the second he got into the doorway. Hopefully this one would listen to negotiations. "Do you understand English?"

The being looked at him, before nodding. Its gaze shifted to the sword at his side, a glimmer of recognition appearing in its alien eyes for a moment, before it looked back to him.

"Were you human, once?" Noctis asked. The being's eyes practically gleamed in response, its mannerisms becoming notedly more excited.

It held up something in its hands, and Noctis leaned down to look at it. It was a polished sterile vial, filled with a familiar clear golden liquid.

One of Iosefka's vials.

He looked back up, making eye contact with the being before asking one more question to confirm his suspicions.

"Are you Iosefka?"

The being nodded once more.

Fuck.

"Can you still write? English, I mean."

Iosefka pointed to a cluttered table with one gangly finger. Noctis walked over to the table, noting with derision that there seemed to be no sense of organisation in this place. Stationery and surgical implements alike were strewn around in an unabashed mess, but luckily it wasn't so bad that Noctis couldn't find what he needed among the disorder.

He passed a piece of paper to what Iosefka had become, sharpening a pencil with a convenient scalpel before passing it to her as well. Noctis pulled over another chair, placing it in front of the gurney which Iosefka had resumed sitting on.

Noctis settled into his chair, drawing up his hands in a steeple. "Who did this to you?" He asked.

The pencil danced on the paper. "Upstairs. Third floor, laboratory. She is armed; do not be captured."

"Okay, got it. If I may ask, what happened here?"

"My sister. Drip. Broke in from the second floor window. Captured me; did this to me. Drop. Neglected patients. Status?"

Noctis sighed. "Without their help, they died. Here's a little conundrum, though; they all look at least a week old. What's going on there?"

"Blood coma. Healing blood kept patients in stasis despite being medically dead. Drip. State of stasis broken without fresh supply of blood. Drop. Patients died of natural causes."

Noctis breathed out slowly through his teeth. "Are you okay with me killing her? She's your sister, after all."

"Not my sister anymore," the pencil scrawled on the piece of paper in angry letters. "Did this to me, was planning to do this to others but no new patients. Your doing?"

"She certainly seemed shifty enough for me to send survivors I found somewhere else."

"Good. Make her suffer; she-" Iosefka wrote, before her hand spasmed. It raised up into the air, and pinpricks of the same light that permeated her body flared into life in the air. They grew in brightness, seemingly elongating and turning towards Noctis as they did. Her hand, pointed directly at him, trembled with apparent exertion.

"Are you okay?" Noctis asked, getting up from the chair. Iosefka raised her hand to forestall him, and the trembling increased. Her arm practically shook with effort as she finally tore it to the side, the little stars of light turning along with it, before the stars _flared_.

Noctis leaped off of the chair and got behind a sturdy looking desk. When his eyes cleared, he saw numerous holes in the wall. The edges of the holes were glowing with residual heat, as if something extremely hot had punched through the wall with overwhelming force.

"So sorry," Iosefka frantically wrote. "The call, it overwhelms. The cosmos, its daughter called for your death. I resisted the command, but only barely. I hear the sticky sounds, plip, plop, plip, plop. I hear the cosmos in motion, like a great sea. Cannot think straight, mind no longer my own."

Iosefka looked up, staring him in the eyes before writing a new sentence.

"Cannot live like this," hurriedly wrote. "Mind and body not mine, I only have minimal control. Do what you must."

"Are you sure?" Noctis asked, taking out his revolver. Iosefka looked at it before shaking her head.

"Central nervous system decentralised; entire head made out of nervous tissue. Bullet will overpenetrate, will not expand. Circulatory system is still intact, analogous to human one. Damage to heart will result in death. Use your sword; new one?" She wrote, her other hand pointing to his sheathed blade.

"Yeah… the one I had broke."

"Careless oaf. Make sure she regrets everything. I hope I'll see her in hell."

"Give her an earful, alright?" Noctis asked, drawing his cane-sword. Iosefka looked at him, her alien eyes, glowing with eldritch light, silently imploring him to do what he must.

The sword almost trivially punched through the flesh of Iosefka's torso. There wasn't any bone or even cartilage to make up a skeleton, which made the body more like a walking jellyfish than anything else. Instead of blood, a clear amber liquid gushed out from around his blade. Clawed hands gouged divots into the metal of the gurney, and the once-human alien quivered in its death throes before the light that once permeated it died out.

Noctis looked at the scene grimly, flicking his blade to get rid of any serum still on it. This kill held no honour, but if it granted mercy from such torment… he would do this until the end.

The great staircase creaked under his feet. It curved skywards into the upper recesses of the clinic - defiled to become a laboratory - and at the highest point waited his quarry. Beasts were too simple for him, to be honest. They were bloodthirsty, ravenous and positively rabid, but their thirst for blood made them dumb. Ambushing them or taking them by surprise was a simple matter of staying out of sight, not making too much noise and masking his scent.

No, the greatest hunt of all… was man. To track down and eliminate a thinking being, one that had sinned beyond redemption at that, was a joy that he had forgotten for far too long. Explosives were fine and all, but there was something about killing with bullet and blade that was simply alluring to him.

"Ah, moonlit scents…" The impostor's voice echoed down from somewhere near the top of the staircase. "How did you worm your way in here? Very unfortunate. I had such high hopes for you."

"High hopes for what?" Noctis hollered back. "To turn me into a walking jellyfish?"

"Well, I won't make any excuses. Would you mind leaving us alone? Things need not change. You'll do the rescuing, and I'll do the saving…"

"Saving? I've done the rescuing, but I'm sure as hell that you're not saving anyone."

"I _am_ saving them, you uneducated swine! I elevate them beyond their beastly bodies, bringing them close to the bosom of the Great Ones. A simple hunter like you will _never_ understand the work I do here."

"Probably. But what I _do_ understand is that you hired me to lure people here for you to experiment on. If you think of this place as a clinic I'll eat my goddamn hat. Have you seen the state of the wards? They are literally cluttered to the brim with week-old corpses. Some doctor _you_ are."

"They were useless for my endeavours," the impostor spat out. "Sick to the bones, rendered comatose by overuse of blood, they were as far from the divinity of the Great Ones as anyone could be. But, if you refuse to leave... Ah, well. I've always wanted to try my hand on a Hunter…"

"I'd like to see you try," Noctis replied, cynical humour leaking into his voice. "But get in line. Most of this bloody city wants my head on a platter already."

"You can't hide behind such facetiousness forever," the false Iosefka said haughtily. "Now come. Face this proud member of the Church's own Choir, and despair!"

The Choir, huh? Now he owed the Upper Cathedral Ward a visit. He crossed the threshold of the staircase, entering an empty room with weapons drawn before he found himself having to dodge a bladed whip lashing towards his neck.

"That'll be quite enough of you, then. Isn't it time someone put you out of your misery?" The false Iosefka asked, her whip-sword - the same kind that Noctis had - and a double-barrelled pistol in her hands.

"I'm not feeling that miserable myself, so no thanks."

"Hush, hush. Stay still... This won't hurt a bit," the imposter replied, slamming the tip of her cane onto the ground to lock the blades back together. "I'll soon have you right as rain…"

She stretched her hand outwards, and a small swirling hole in reality was over it. Out of that hole shot a veritable swarm of tentacles that quickly flew outwards to brutally slam him across the room and out through the doorway before just as quickly shrinking back. Noctis jumped back to his feet, barely avoiding another blast of tentacles aimed at his previously prone form.

"Lying through your teeth again, eh?" He quipped, taking out another Molotov. "You know what they say… liar, liar, pants on fire!"

The last words were punctuated with a grunt of exertion as he flung the Molotov. The impostor, probably expecting him to swing his sword or fire his gun, received the Molotov directly in her centre of mass. The Molotov exploded, engulfing her in flame that caught on her white robes before her whole body seemed to become a merrily crackling inferno.

She collapsed to the ground, rolling on the floor to extinguish the flames. However, that gave Noctis the perfect opportunity to empty all six cylinders of his revolver into her prone frame. Her clothes had been extinguished, but she had exchanged that for six revolver rounds to the torso. The impostor staggered back up onto her two feet, using her own cane-sword to steady herself.

"Just die!" She yelled, firing off a shot from her own pistol. Noctis barely dodged the twin bullets, which zipped out of the open doorway and out of sight. "Enough of you!" Another shot. Noctis dodged it. "Now, stop that!" A third shot, which achieved about as much as the previous two. "Stay still, you uneducated bastard!"

Noctis reloaded his revolver, filling all six cylinders with new cartridges. His own sword's blade detached into its segments, and the resulting whip was now moved into a reverse grip. "How about no?" He asked rhetorically, drawing it and firing. He missed on purpose, the bullet instead sparking off of the floor.

The impostor instinctively flinched, giving him the opportunity to lash out with his own whip. The bladed whip caught her in the side of the neck, severing the carotid artery - somehow he knew that it was that and not the jugular vein - and causing bright red arterial blood to spurt out of the gash.

The impostor's hand went towards her bleeding neck, before looking at him. "Curse this oblivious fool…" She said, staring him down before she collapsed to the ground. A nudge from Noctis's boot confirmed that she was dead. He smiled.

"You're nowhere as good as Henryk, Choir or no Choir. Eat your own words, bit-" Noctis began, before a piercing pain in his head staggered him. He collapsed against a gurney off to the side of the room, trying and failing to pull himself back up.

The memories weren't his. While the blood echoes from a human or a beast were more subtle, like skills or weapons learnt or obtained from dead opponents, this one was inserted via brute force. Medical procedures and past surgeries filled his mind, and faces of patients who'd lived and died by her hand all but danced in front of his gaze.

These were Iosefka's memories, he was sure of it. There were fights with a sister - a twin. Iosefka leaned to the humanitarian side of things, while her sister was more coldly scientific. They became estranged, and that relationship led to what had happened here. One had betrayed the other, and both were now dead. Justice has been delivered, or at least the closest thing to it in this damned place.

He slowly walked through the clinic again, going down to the first floor. Somehow, he had realised where Iosefka had been; the exact same ward that he had stayed in. He - or rather, Iosefka - remembered there being _something_ on his old bed. A postcard, perhaps? Or a letter?

It was a letter. Sealed with an all too familiar mark, Noctis immediately recognised it for what it was. The two emaciated hounds of Cainhurst. The contents of the letter were no less mystifying; an invite to Castle Cainhurst itself. Apparently a coach was waiting for him at Hemwick Charnel Lane, a place that he'd never heard of before. Perhaps he would ask Gilbert about it soon.

Now he had a conundrum. If he went ahead to Hemwick Charnel Lane, he might miss the window he had now to enter the Upper Cathedral Ward.

On the other hand, he could miss the coach entirely if he went to the Upper Cathedral Ward. He found himself weighing a literal royal summons against possibly discovering more about what had happened to Yharnam, and eventually his sense of curiosity won out.

First Byrgenwerth, then the Upper Cathedral Ward. Cainhurst could wait.

/-/

Noctis realised with some degree of alarm that he no longer felt afraid when guns were pointed at him. Of course, that lack of fear could potentially be a detriment when he had two sentry turrets armed with 12.7mm heavy machine guns pointed at him. The green laser beams that pointed at a spot directly over his heart weren't exactly the subtlest of cues, after all.

"With all due respect, sir, I mean you no harm," he said. It was a true statement; he was currently unarmed, and it wasn't like he could do anything meaningful against the Headmaster of Beacon Academy. Ozpin stared him down, his glasses glinting with the light from overhead so that Noctis couldn't see them. His hands were crossed in front of his face, or more precisely they were interlocked so that they blocked everything below the middle of his nose.

"I just like to take precautions, Mr Argent," Ozpin said evenly. The tone was one of derision, but other than that Noctis couldn't infer anything else. "Especially with a man whose kill count leaped by the hundreds in just one night."

"That was part of the mission, Headmaster. You know that."

"Yes, I know. I even recall giving your team carte blanche. However, your team's methods have proven to be a touch too disagreeable for me not to take action. Your elimination of Roman Torchwick, no matter how effective, was the final straw. Collateral damage being somewhere in the hundreds of deaths, including one dead student and another mentally incapacitated, was too much… at least for my colleagues. Personally I find them palatable enough, but maybe that's just because I'm accustomed to lower standards," Ozpin said. "Do you happen to know how much trouble you're in?"

"No, sir."

"Then it's time for you to find out," Ozpin replied evenly. With a gesture, the sentry turrets retracted back into the ceiling. "My Vacuan contemporary in particular has requested for your literal head on a silver platter. My Mistralian counterpart has asked for you to be declared _Excommunicate Tratoris_ , essentially rendering you persona non grata. Luckily for you, my Atlesian colleague and I managed to secure clemency for you via majority vote. Do _not_ make me regret my decision."

"Understood."

"I certainly hope so. Now, as for the _real_ reason I called you here…" He trailed off, entering something into the keyboard on his desk. "I understand that relations between your team and your other peers has been rather fraught as of late."

"You are correct."

"Probably because of one of their friends being dead, and the other in a psychiatric ward for acute stress disorder. No matter. You know what they say; distance makes the heart grow fonder."

"What do you mean, sir?"

"A new mission for your team. Tell me, Mr Argent, have you ever been to Argus?"

"Of course," Noctis replied evenly. "A Mistralian port city, one so important to Atlas's economy and trade that they maintain a considerable military presence there."

Ozpin smiled. "Of course. But as of now, things have changed. Now Cainhurst also possesses an even larger military presence there, as well as in Atlas."

"Then what is our purpose there?" Noctis asked.

"Your team will be officially there as Doctor Rouge's security detail. Surely you are familiar with her, she is the director of Beacon's on-site medical wing after all."

"I recognise the name. However, I do not believe that we have personally met."

"And now you will. Now, I say 'officially' because the good doctor is more than capable of defending herself. No, your real purpose there is to investigate. There have been… disappearances among associates of mine. Students from Haven Academy have apparently been kidnapped, and I quote, by some kind of 'death cult'. Are you familiar with the 'Order of the Bloated Woman'?"

"No, I am not. If I may ask, why would Haven not just send an official request for investigation? Why all this false pretense?"

"Because we wish to keep public knowledge of these disappearances to a bare minimum. You should know that the parts of Haven normally explored by the public are rather sterilised, devoid of the usual seedy dive bars, opium dens and flower-girl houses - otherwise known as brothels - and we do not want to break that impression. A city's dark underbelly being exposed tends to be bad for trade, after all," Ozpin said, gesturing as he did. "The revelation of a human-sacrificing death cult operating in one of the most highly populated non-capital cities in Remnant would surely cause mass panic. Panic leads to negative emotions, and negative emotions attract Grimm like sharks to blood."

"So what do we do in Argus?"

"Doctor Rouge will be there to speak at a conference about philanthropy in terms of medical services. She is the Valean director of Médecins Sans Frontières - Doctors Without Borders, if you can't understand Valean - and she will undoubtedly be a high-value target for the cult or other criminal organisations. They will probably wish to either kidnap her for ransom or kill her, most probably the latter if we're referring to the cult. She will be bait for you and your team. Foil the kidnappers and track down where exactly these malicious elements came from, and you have your lead."

"Very well. When do we start?"

Ozpin slid a thumbdrive over his desk to him. Noctis took the thumbdrive, pocketing it as was normal. "That is your briefing for this mission. I have taken the liberty of arranging airship tickets for the four of you; your flight takes off in three days. If I were you, I'd use that time to prepare."

"Yes, sir."

"Oh, one more thing," Ozpin said, raising his hand. He stared directly at Noctis, his glasses glinting in the light once again. "This operation _must_ be covert. The cult seems to have tendrils that reach even into Vale, and I cannot guarantee that they won't take action if they connect your team and Beacon. Furthermore, I will _not_ hesitate to excommunicate you and disavow your actions if you cause an international incident. What happened Roman and the warehouse only a few weeks ago _cannot_ happen again. Do you understand me?"

"I do, sir."

"Mr Argent, you may leave now," Ozpin finally said, the door of his office's elevator opening behind Noctis as he did. "Dismissed."

Noctis walked numbly into the elevator. Almost instinctively, he flexed his wrist. A heavy-duty smatchet emerged from his arm, the black matte finish preventing the massive machete-esque knife from gleaming. It was most undoubtedly meant as a weapon more than a tool, with the large leaf-shaped blade suited for hacking and slashing as well as stabbing while the heavy pommel was clearly meant to be utilised for blunt strikes. The increased strength of his prosthetic arm's combat mode would make his strikes much more powerful than anything a normal human would do, and the increased force would likely allow him to cut through bone with ease.

This situation was bad. He hadn't seen the actual briefing that Ozpin had prepared and put into the thumbdrive yet, but he already found his gut telling him to treat this scenario with the utmost caution. He and his entire team were at risk of losing _everything_ if their mission in Argus went FUBAR, but some small part of him actually felt excited. A new mission meant a new directive, something that gave a certain sense of direction to his mind.

Argus. A city of memories for him, both good and bad. Familiar faces, allies from a time long past and old enemies with even older grudges, laid in wait. The city was like an onion; pristine outer layers hiding an increasingly pungent inner flesh. It was a mystery that Noctis missed, stuck in Vale as he was. Vale was nice, but a bit too simple. There was the White Fang, and probably the recently deceased Roman's band of criminals, but other than those and the inevitable street thugs there wasn't much going on. Argus was an entirely different beast, one that Noctis could hardly wait to tackle.

Finally, something interesting. Hopefully all this wouldn't blow up in his face.

 **(Not much action, sadly, but I have to set up the next arc somehow. This one was a bloody slog to get out, but the next few chapters - with a much livelier setting and plot I've planned out - will probably be much more fun for both the author and the reader. Hopefully this isn't too bad, though.)**


	24. Enter the Watchman

**(I know that I'm _very_ late, and that this has taken an inordinately long period of time. I blame actually having to take exams. It's a shitty excuse, but it's a valid one. Updates should be more frequent now that my exams are over, at least.)**

The armoured column rolled to a stop, allowing her to slide off of the lead vehicle onto the ground. Eight Gareth IFVs covered the target area with the firing vectors of their 30mm auto-cannons, preparing to unleash a barrage of hell by high-explosive incendiary cannon fire upon the hostiles presumably there; with 'there' being a small gated estate in the residential district.

The particular family owning this estate was otherwise unremarkable, other than the fact that they were council members of the Traders' Union - a seemingly average merchants' guild if one took their benign name for granted, but they happened to be a Valean drug cartel that had its tendrils in every other kingdom. The presence of one of the hydra's heads in Argus was an unfortunate blemish on the city, and one that had to be cleared up before the rightful Heir of Cainhurst arrived.

There were already cries of alarm in the estate's grounds, and bodyguards dressed in impeccable suits and ties ran out. They were already armed with a variety of man-portable weapons; some lugged around shoulder-fired ATGMs or squad-operated heavy machine guns, while others just had assault rifles or designated marksman rifles with them. All of them had some extent of body armour, not that that would save them of course.

One of the friendly commando units, a lightly armoured figure with an unmarked full-face helmet save only a single slit for visibility, got out of the back of one of the IFVs. Fiddling with a loudspeaker attached to a radio on its back, it then directed the device towards the villa.

"Attention!" The robot's loudspeaker boomed. "The resident owners of this property have fallen under suspicion of perpetuating criminal acts, including orchestrating organised crime and illegally distributing controlled substances internationally..."

"Procedurally correct. Continue with proceedings."

"Surrender and lay down your arms, and we shall proceed according to the proper code of law of this country as pertaining to arrest, prosecution, and possible sentencing," the robot paused, turning to her to verify its orders.

"That is the correct procedure," the voice module said, a hand enveloped in a hazmat suit gesturing for the robot to continue.

"If not, then under the authority of the Undying Queen of Cainhurst, the Immortal Majesty Annalise of the honoured Vilebloods, we shall enact thy sentence as we see fit. Resist, and your unrepentant guilt shall be proven to the world. The guilty shall be punished; your innocence shall mean nothing. What does thou say?"

The robot was answered by a hail of machine gun fire. She smiled.

"Looks like they have chosen an ignoble death for themselves," she said, dragging the robot behind the cover afforded to them by the IFVs. "Shall we turn this place into a graveyard?"

"Oh, we shall," the robot said to her, before accessing its radio once more. "57th Mechanised Infantry to 8th Armoured Division, the suspects have rejected the carrot. Proceed with the stick."

"A reminder that this particular stick is a really big one," the leader of the 8th replied, just barely audible over the sound of a powerful turbine engine running in the background. "Stay clear of the eastern wall for the time being. Especially now."

Suddenly, the eastern wall _exploded_ , chunks of rubble flying out into the villa's courtyard. Four thunderclaps, which would have been deafening if her ears hadn't been augmented, rang out amidst the distant commotion of morning rush hour. And then, their main guns smoking with recent use, four Galahad MBTs rolled into the estate from the entryway they had made. Coaxial and pintle-mounted machine guns unleashed a hailstorm of 7.62mm and 12.7mm rounds that tore through the throng of hired guards, throwing the defending side into chaos.

Then the Gareth IFVs opened fire, obliterating large pockets of resistance with 30mm auto-cannon fire and coaxial 7.92mm machine gun fire. The barrage continued as the doors on the backsides of the IFVs opened, allowing their passengers to exit. Foot soldier units sprinted out of their vehicles, already spreading out and firing their assault rifles to provide suppressing fire and to pin down the enemy further.

It was in this absolute rout that she started her operation. Some of the soon-to-be dead guards cast questioning or surprised gazes at her, probably because of how out of place she seemed. She couldn't fault them, of course; an impeccable suit combined with a fedora, no matter how sharp the creases of the suit were, probably wasn't exactly combat gear. Neither was the umbrella in her hands. Still, they were wrong.

One of the guards, for once showing a modicum of deductive ability, opened fire on her with his assault rifle. She opened her umbrella, allowing the bullets to either deflect off of the bulletproof canopy or simply flatten themselves against the suddenly rigid fabric.

She chambered a 7.62mm round in her umbrella's shaft, loading it and closing the bolt before pointing the tip of the umbrella at the offending guard. The trigger near the handle of the umbrella was pulled, and the guard suddenly found himself with a newfound hole in his torso.

His sudden discovery was punctuated by him dropping dead to the ground, probably since that hole was where his heart had once been. The umbrella's canopy was closed, and a long spearhead erupted out of the tip of the thing.

She leapt into the heart of the fray, multi-coloured hair dancing in a corona as she stabbed guard after guard with her weapon. The umbrella's handle came into its own here, hooking around ankles to trip people over and leave them open to a spearhead entering their skull via their eye sockets.

The figure swept a stray lock of hair out of her face, identifying the familiar white, brown and pink strands with a measure of pride. _Her_ hair, connected to her body.

Suddenly, a loud crack rang out. The illusion over her actual body shattered like glass, and she dived behind a suitable stack of sandbags as cover. The spearhead of her umbrella retracted, before even that was consumed by her weapon's transformation. The umbrella's handle turned into a skeletal wooden butt stock with a convenient cheek pad, while the fabric canopy ended up draped over a perforated barrel shroud as a surprisingly effective manner of camouflage.

She slid home a ten-round magazine already stocked up with 7.62mm cartridges, before taking aim through the scope of her designated marksman rifle.

Her new face transformed, its otherwise blank and smooth surface allowing a panel to open. Out of the panel slid a large rangefinder and targeting apparatus, which settled in to slot the scope over the set of lens in the right side of her face.

The limited infrared capability of her scope allowed her to track down the offending sniper, and before he could take his next shot he found himself without most of his head.

She reached down to collect the used brass - it could perhaps be traced back to her, since she was using Remnant-made ammunition, and she didn't want to leave behind any loose ends lest they came back to bite her in the ass.

Her marksman rifle transformed into a long _ahlspeiss_ which she grasped in one hand. She flexed her aura and another illusion burst into life, this time of the same fedora-wearing facsimile of her fleeing in the opposite direction. A few of the guards broke cover to give chase, and were promptly mowed down by the approaching soldiers.

Amidst the chaos, she slinked into the mansion proper. Unfortunately, she couldn't stick around in the battlefield that the courtyard had become. Her target was hiding somewhere in his house… perhaps in a panic room?

Aha. There was a butler, a balding man who was probably in his late fifties, trying to make himself look as small as possible, probably in the hopes that he wouldn't be noticed. Her hand grasped his shoulder, dashing those hopes on the brutal rocks of reality. She pulled him up to look directly at her face, his face growing a shade paler as comprehension of his predicament dawned on him.

The butler started struggling, prompting her to achieve a better grip on the man via grasping around his throat.

"Now, now. I won't hurt you… at least, it isn't worth my time to do so. Where is your employer?"

The butler started struggling, somehow gaining enough leverage to jostle his captor around for a bit. They were in some sort of entrance hall with mirrors for walls, and the slight shaking allowed her to get a third party's perspective on the situation at hand.

There was a humanoid figure in a yellow and black CBRN suit, with what appeared to be a full-face gas mask tinted to the point of opaqueness. There was a single line projected onto the mask - not a mask, but an LED screen akin to that of a scroll - that rippled in electronic waves as the voice box attached to it spoke. Pink, white and brown hair trailed down in a natural hairdo that fell down over her shoulders. A long polearm with a metre-long metal spike capped by a disc to protect the user's hand - an _ahlspeiss_ , otherwise known as an awl pike - was held in the figure's right hand, while the left hand was wrapped around the butler's neck.

"Ha. Ha. Ha," the voice box said, waves rippling through the digitalised line like a heart rate monitor. "Now, stop squirming and tell me what I want before my patience runs out. Does your employer have a panic room or a hidey-hole where he's cooped up? If yes, then tell me where he is."

The butler's pants were soaked with a dilute urea solution - otherwise known as urine - and he was positively quaking with fear. Somehow, the man gathered enough strength to speak in a stuttering voice.

"I-I don't know where the master is… he vanished into his office, it's on the second floor at the east wing… please, madame, let this poor innocent man go…"

"Very well," she said through her voice box, bodily flinging the man across the room. He hit one of the mirrored walls so hard that the mirror's glass face cracked from the force of the impact.

"A man I've come to respect once told me something, his life philosophy to be exact," she said, grasping her weapon in both hands. "You know what he said? Innocence means _nothing_."

She thrust forward, the force of the blow carrying the through the butler's entire torso and deep into the wall behind to pin him there like a butterfly in a display case. The man's final breath came out as a wet gurgle, bright red arterial blood spewing out of his mouth as he died like a speared fish.

She tore the metal spike out of the deceased butler almost contemptuously before moving on, flicking the weapon to get the worst of the blood and gore off of the speartip. The mansion was relatively large, so the trek to the suspect's office was long enough for her to engage in her new favourite hobby - introspection.

Memories beyond her rebirth were few and far between. She remembered working for a man with bright orange hair and an equally flamboyant sense of style. She was his bodyguard, his aide, even his assassin sometimes. She didn't know whether it was a strictly professional working relationship they had, or if they were related by blood or even each other's paramours. All she recalled was working for the man.

And then the explosion happened. The orange haired man was gone. She had been taken in by the Bloody Crow, and under his will and watchful eyes... she was reborn. Stronger, faster, enhanced in ways that she neither could comprehend nor dared to.

She no longer saw, heard, tasted, smelt or felt. Now, she _sensed_. Neither any wasted information nor any wasted time processing said information. The price was but a pittance; her face, and her identity.

She supposed that on some level she was still Neo, but now she was mostly Custodian Morgan le Fay. She was a replacement for Custodian Vortigern, which had unfortunately been destroyed in the Heir's final test.

It was a shame, but Vortigern had not been a 'true' Custodian - vis a vis its lack of an actual soul. To put it simply, Vortigern had simply been an oversized robot that was designed to fail against even a nascent Knight. Morgan was the latest to join the Custodians' hallowed ranks, and unlike Vortigern she wouldn't die in such a pitiful role as the final obstacle of an aspirant Knight.

The illusion reformed around her, and now there was only the woman in the fedora and suit. The spear returned to its more innocuous umbrella form, but with the deadly pointed tip still exposed.

"I am making my way to the suspect's office. He has retreated into his fortified panic room, and it is unlikely that he has escaped," she said, internally accessing the communication network she shared with the conventional forces outside. "The panic room is completely enclosed, which means that he has essentially forced himself into waiting for us. Is our intel still valid?"

"Yes, Custodian Morgan," the officer unit in charge of the 57th replied. "The intelligence we have on the villa and it's capacities remains correct. No defensive emplacements, and no fortifications save for the exterior wall. So the panic room has no method of escape?"

"It is a fortified room; essentially, a prison cell. Our victory is all but assured. Morgan out," she said into the comms before shutting them off.

Slipping past the panicked collective of maids, cleaning staff and other assorted non-combat personnel that were currently seeking to escape, her umbrella's hook tripped over a scandalously-clad lady before the metal spike adopted a new position of hovering over her neck. "Now, milady, would you kindly tell me where the master of the house is?"

"H-he's in the panic room, in his office…" The woman stuttered. "P-please, let me go…"

"Of course," she said in a reply, before forcing the umbrella's metre-long spike down and through the woman's neck. The woman struggled for a moment, choking to death on her own blood, before a combination of blood loss and suffocation ended her otherwise insignificant existence.

The long spike was removed once more, aided by the rondel guard capping the spike and ensuring that the weapon didn't slide too deep into its target, and its owner resumed her process of avoiding the now even terrified conglomeration of people. Apparently the woman whose blood was ruining what was honestly a rather exquisite carpet was the master's wife. Unfortunate. The mansion's carpet looked pretty expensive, after all.

She slotted a new cartridge into the shaft of her umbrella's hidden rifle, closing the bolt once more to truly chamber the round. The doors to the master's office were a masterpiece of carpentry. Carved down to the most minute details to depict instances of trade and commerce, these large oaken doors signalled immense wealth, mercantile enterprise and, most importantly, power.

She unceremoniously kicked them open, her heavily augmented leg breaking the otherwise exceedingly sturdy locks with ease. Splinters of shattered wood flew as her first shot pulped the torso of a bodyguard waiting in ambush. She followed up with a smoke grenade, tossing it in to completely destroy any visibility that the remaining guards would have had.

"You stand against the greatest of her Majesty's most holy order of Custodians," her voice box said, a hint of pride leaking through into the metallic baritone. "As a consequence, you shall die."

The guards, not bothering to respond verbally, replied via their assault rifles. The umbrella's aura-reinforced canopy opened once again, deflecting and blocking a hailstorm of rounds that flew off of the smooth shield in a shower of sparks.

"Pitiful," the electronic voice rasped. "Even children could do better."

The umbrella's spike emerged as the canopy folded back, and she lunged forwards in a flawless impression of a bayonet charge that ended in the neck of one of the two remaining bodyguards. She promptly tore the umbrella free, tripping over the last guard by yanking his leg out from under him with the hooked handle of her umbrella before spearing his prone form in the heart.

"All armed resistance has been eliminated," she said into the communications network. "57th Infantry and 8th Armoured, proceed with removing this hive of the pests infesting it."

"With pleasure, my Lady," the commanding officer of the 57th replied. "Kindly place the beacon where the slimy bastard is hiding, and her Majesty's Royal Air Force will do the rest."

"You mean that Jormungandr bombers will flatten the entire building with cruise missiles, yes. But I get the idea. The beacon is for the missiles to home in on, correct?"

"Yes, Custodian. Sadly, we lack mortal vassals or agents for assist us," the commander of the 57th said almost wistfully. "The duty of placing the beacon could have been done by the forces of vassal states or to sanctioned allied specialists, thereby removing the reason of utilising our own troops to press the assault, but it appears that it was not to be."

"Our network shall be rebuilt in time," she replied. "It is inevitable, with how Cainhurst grows in power every single day. I wonder… who shall we recruit from among the rabble?"

"Whoever the Bloody Crow or the Heir deems worthy," the commander of the 57th said, his synthetic tone leaving no space for dissent. "Or, if Fate would smile down upon us, the Queen herself."

She would have smiled, if she had not lost the necessary musculature in the process that included having a screen for a face. Ah, well. She hadn't really liked that face anyways.

She engaged the suction cups, attaching the beacon over where she knew the panic room's door was. There was a hiss of displaced air as the spaces between the cups and the painting that served as the door's switch were forcibly evacuated to become vacuum. Her hands danced over the interface of the beacon, turning it on and connecting it to the IFF network of the bombers.

Within fifteen minutes, a conventional-warhead cruise missile would hit the beacon as directly as possible - preliminary tests indicated a spread of just about five metres which, considering that the projectile involved was a bloody _cruise missile_ , was pretty damned good already. The man within the panic room, whom she had seen neither hide nor hair of, was essentially a dead man. No panic room, no matter how fortified, could withstand a direct hit from a cruise missile travelling at supersonic speeds.

She dragged the man's frankly massive desk over to the panic room's door, barricading the room and sealing the hypothetical criminal kingpin within. Items clattered to the ground, which she glanced at before beginning to stare. This… changed things.

"Morgan le Fay to commander of the 57th. Call off the bombers."

"Wilco, Madame. But, if I may ask, why?"

An adjacent wardrobe was torn open, revealing voluminous robes - clearly ceremonial ones - made of black and yellow silk. An ornate sickle, which hadn't been cleaned quite enough to remove the traces of dried blood and offal that still clung onto the blade, laid innocuously on the carpeted floor.

"The situation merits further investigation."

"Ah. Is it… the Order?"

"Yes," she said simply. A wall scroll - a rolled up piece of paper, yellowed with age - bore Mistralian characters that read 'Order of the Bloated Woman' when translated. One particular book was snatched off of the shelf, revealing the presence of a single eye on the cover that glared balefully at her. She jabbed the eye viciously with a single finger, causing it to flinch back into its socket and close.

Perhaps she would have found the contents of the office alarming, long ago. Her barely remembered employment under the orange-haired one and her rebirth under the watchful gaze of the one true Queen had changed that. Now, all she felt was a blunted sense of disgust at the filth she was discovering.

"I see. It would be best to destroy the beacon, then," the 57th's commander said. "We cannot afford to take our chances with such a rare opportunity."

If she still had the ability to make facial expressions, she would have frowned. Or pouted. Instead, a sad emoji materialised on the screen that was now her face. She had been looking forward to the fireworks, but duty came first. Her _ahlspeiss_ lashed out, impaling the beacon and damaging it beyond repair.

"It is done. A shame. I was rather excited to see the whole place explode," she said rather despondently.

"Rather like a fireworks display, correct?" The 57th's commander replied, his automated voice somehow sounding sentimental. "Ah, no matter. Perhaps we could do it again after the investigation? A place as corrupted as this can hardly be left for any unfortunate civilians to occupy, after all."

The emoji on Morgan's face flickered and changed into one with a beaming grin on its face. The commander sighed.

"Is it still possible for me to retract my statement? No? Damn it."

Closer inspection of the hidden door revealed that it was meant to swing outwards, which meant that the desk currently blocking its way had essentially sealed the room shut. That and the fact that it seemed to be the only way in or out of the secret room behind it.

So the room was now a tomb.

"So we leave the master of the house alone, then?" The commander asked.

"His refuge has been sealed. It is now his tomb."

"Very well, then. The punishment befits the crime."

"Indeed. In the name of the Queen."

"In the Queen's name."

/-/

A right hand, covered by a padded black leather glove, slowly stroked the chin of a rather young man dressed in the manner of an Atlesian Gestapo officer. Noctis's left hand, the metal forearm of which was entirely hidden by the sleeve of a leather greatcoat and a matching glove, drummed a frantic rhythm onto the desk of the airship's cabin as he took in the scene before him.

Icarus laid a hand on his shoulder, pointing at a particular object before pointing yet again at a possible location for said object. "Why not move that rook over there?"

"That's shitty advice and you know it," Noctis jabbed, but without any venom in his voice. His hand still moved towards the handle of the knife strapped to his left wrist, however. "My moving the rook will leave my castle relatively undefended. Her queen's still on the board, so I don't want to risk it."

"Are you done planning, Argent?" Carmine asked irritably, staring him down from across the desk. "You are on the back foot and you know it."

Silence reigned for a while, at least whatever silence remained between the slow crunching of Lapis chowing down on a generous serving of mixed nuts. She was seated on her own seat in the first-class cabin, and was currently watching the chess match unfold with every sign of amusement.

"Can you not chew so loudly?" Noctis griped. "You're breaking my concentration with the racket you're making."

Lapis shrugged. "Bite me, boss. I like my nuts."

Noctis sighed, running his hand over his face. "Do you mean it literally, or do you also mean it in a way in which I should offer my condolences to one Solis Aurum?"

"Hey, not my fault that you walked in on us doing it."

"But you could have had the courtesy to not do it on _my bed_."

"Okay, people, break it up," Icarus said, getting between the two feuding teammates. "We all need our creature comforts, but we should also be careful not to infringe upon the privacy of each other. Agreed?"

"Agreed. But a bit of advice, Lapis? Use protection," Noctis said, finally picking up a knight and placing it where he thought it would be most useful. Lapis choked on a peanut. "In our field of work, discretion is of the utmost priority."

"And I shudder to think about you under the influence of pregnancy hormones," Icarus interjected, pushing his reading glasses up the bridge of his nose. "You'd probably raze an entire city to the ground if someone looked at you the wrong way."

"I concur," Carmine said, moving her own piece. "And checkmate."

"What?" Noctis blurted out. He had castled his king near the start of the game, but now it appeared that his black rook has been replaced by the white queen. The king was currently trapped behind a row of its own black pawns and faced with an impossible dilemma; it had nowhere to flee since it was cornered in its own castle but on the other hand if it captured the white queen it would in turn get captured by the bishop backing it up. His gloved hand reached out to tip the black king over, indicating his decision to surrender. "Fine, you win."

"Which has become the norm," his partner retorted. "You play too aggressively; you are willing to throw everything away for a chance to land a single blow on your opponent. At least it makes sense with what I have observed from you."

"Talking about acting aggressively…" Noctis said cryptically, stowing the portable chess set back into its case. He took out a familiar-looking thumb drive out of a pocket in his greatcoat. He slot it into a USB socket of the inflight entertainment system, loading the video file before letting it play. A familiar outline of a head appeared in front of a drab background.

"Good to see you again, team NICL. Some of you may be wondering as to why you are going to Argus now. The answer is brutal in its simplicity; your elimination of Roman Torchwick has resulted in such heavy backlash that we thought it best to put some time and distance between you and your peers at Beacon. However, instead of sending the four of you on a mere vacation, a matter has come up that has proven to be pressing enough to warrant sending your team over for possible wetwork."

The screen transitioned to a deluge of pop-up files containing dossiers and articles, and a program rapidly scanned the files before projecting relevant information to the forefront. "The 'Order of the Bloated Woman'. To put it in the simplest of terms, it is a pagan death cult. Masquerading as a social club for the rich and powerful of Argus, the wealth and power that its members hold has effectively made law enforcement powerless to interfere with their activities. It is not exactly a secret, after all, that Argus is a rather corrupt city in general."

The screen transitioned again, indicating a rather familiar face. "Officially, your team is here to escort Doctor Rouge - the director of Beacon's on-site state-of-the-art medical facility, and the Valean board member of prominent NGO 'Doctors Without Borders'. She will be arriving in Argus two days after you do, and I shall pass on the relevant date to you when we reach that point. Unofficially, you are here to wipe out the cult. You may be wondering, then, as to why you are only now being sent here. The truth of the matter is that the cult has crossed a line."

Pictures and schematics for a large device, which looked like a bomb of some sort, appeared on the screen. "The cult has been found to have spent vast quantities of finances and research on devising a biological weapon, the effects of which are unknown as of yet. What we _do_ know is that this weapon has been designed to be effective against Faunus in particular."

There was an audible cracking as Lapis's hand clenched down on the bag of nuts she was holding, and Noctis knew that the contents had doubtlessly been crushed into powder. The voice continued relentlessly.

"Your mission, then, is to destroy the cult before the weapon is completed. There is no use in detaining the cultists or trying to rehabilitate them; they are fanatical, and methods unknown to us have been used to ensure their loyalty. They are not immune to pain, though, so enhanced interrogation could still prove effective. Your objectives are to find and destroy any research facilities, notes and equipment that the cult has been using, eliminate all high-ranking members of the cult and to prevent the future deployment of any biological weapons at all costs. Should you find a prototype or a working device, destroy it _immediately_."

Icarus was already taking down notes. The voice continued on.

"These men are otherwise upstanding members of Mistralian society, so discretion is advised. The local law enforcement is not to be trusted; those in charge are in the pockets of the cult. The Atlesian armed forces contingent stationed in the city is clean, however, and the presently occupying presence of Cainhurst is nothing but trustworthy."

Noctis could _feel_ the smugness from his partner, but he shrugged it aside. The voice, at least, sounded like it was nearly done.

"However, I _strongly_ recommend that you refrain from causing an international incident. You have already drawn enough ire for your actions in Vale, so I would suggest that you do not repeat them again in Mistral. Just in case, _do not_ hesitate to contact me if anything happens that warrants my attention. All relevant intel has been uploaded onto your burner scrolls. I shall leave you to prepare."

Noctis leaned back, running one hand down his chin in worry. "Shit. I knew we were going after a cult of some sort, but this is just _bad_. We have a time limit in the biological weapon they're making, and since the cultists are all rich bastards it'll be much harder for us to incriminate or eliminate them without trouble."

Lapis shrugged. "We could always blow them up again."

"And then Beacon would renounce us as terrorists. Ozpin was damn clear about that, as well as the fact that we'd be declared _Excommunicate Tratoris_ if we crossed that line again," Noctis deadpanned. "No. We need to be rather subtle about this."

"We'll probably run into some of them while escorting the doctor," Icarus reasoned. "That would be a good place to start."

"Sounds good, but I have one question," Lapis said, raising her hand as she did. "Why the hell did Ozpin actually start caring about the fact that we blew the warehouse up? Hell, how did everyone else in Beacon find out that it was us? I'm pretty damn sure that we covered our tracks enough with the comms jammer and everything else to throw third parties off our tail."

"Blake," Carmine replied grimly. "She was conscious at first, but incoherent from the tranquillisers. Incoherent people run their mouths, and in this case she spewed out everything she knew about the incident to those nearest to her - her teammates. From there, the word spread."

"Damn it!" Icarus suddenly exclaimed, slamming a clenched fist down onto the desk of their cabin. "She is, or rather was, a lieutenant. How in the hell did she not know to keep her damn mouth shut? We trained for this kind of stuff!"

"The drug that the White Fang used for training and the stuff we used on her was probably different," Noctis said evenly. "Different people react differently to different concentrations of different drugs. That's why toxicology is so damn complicated. From simple things like body weight or what drug allergies the patient has to more complicated factors like the kidney and liver health of said patient, it would have been almost impossible to predict how exactly the tranquillisers would have affected her."

"It's out of our hands now, anyways," Lapis grumbled, shrugging as she did. "The academy made everyone involved sign a round of NDAs. Nobody outside our team and team RWBY, with the exception of maybe team JNPR, currently knows or will know about the truth of the matter."

Noctis's burner scroll started ringing. He fished it out of a pocket on his vest, noting that the call was from Ozpin, before taking the call and raising it to his ear. "Argent here," he said.

"Excellent," Ozpin said. "I realise I had forgotten to inform your team about the arrangements made, namely accommodation."

"Ah, that. I was already preparing to have to scout for a cheap motel. The more anonymous we could be, the better."

"Why all the anonymity?" Ozpin asked, his tone playful. "I know that Argus was your old stomping ground, so why not scrounge up some owed favours and make your team's lives that much more comfortable?"

"With respect, sir? Just get to the point," he snapped.

"Very well. In the cargo hold of the airship you are on is a suitcase. It has been registered under your name. In that suitcase is a few rolls of gold coins. You know what they are."

Noctis glanced around at his teammates before moving away from them. He brought the scroll nearer to his mouth, his spare hand cupping over his mouth to muffle his voice. " _Ex Unitate Vires_. From Unity, Strength."

" _Ens Causa Sui_. Being Its Own Cause. Good that you recall what those coins mean. I have already made a reservation for your team under the name of Willem."

"You're expecting us to stay in the goddamn Continental? I haven't been there in _years_ , Ozpin. It's unlikely that anyone there even remembers my name."

"I don't think so. Old men have long memories. You'd find that most of those at the top are old men. Your name and feats have probably been recorded for posterity if nothing else."

Noctis smiled wistfully. "I'd like to think that they'd remember me for a better reason than _posterity_."

"A man can dream, Argent. Why should I break your aspirations over the cold knee of reality?" Ozpin asked. Better to sustain the illusion for as long as possible, if you ask me."

"Enough about truth and lies, Headmaster. Men like us, we don't deserve to distinguish between the two."

"What do you mean?"

"This. The coins. The hotel. Everything," Noctis snapped. "What kind of headmaster has enough connections and power to get us _room and board_ in the goddamn Continental? What kind of student has done enough to expect the Continental's management to _remember who he is_? We're the same, you and I. We're both trying to play roles that we've outgrown long ago."

"Maybe you're correct, Mr Argent. We'll see," Ozpin said nonchalantly. "Oh, one more thing; please do watch your behaviour once you're at the hotel. You know what happens to those who carry out _business_ on Continental grounds."

A savage grin broke out on Noctis's face. "They disappear off of the face of Remnant. At least I remember _that_."

"And may your memory not fail you. Good hunting, Argent, and do make sure not to tread on too many toes while you're at it," Ozpin said, before the call shut off. Noctis stowed his scroll back into his coat.

"What did he say?" Icarus asked.

"We're staying in the fucking Continental," Noctis said, relishing the look of shock on his teammate's face. "Just in case you think it's on me, I can swear to God himself that it wasn't my idea."

/-/

To say that the Continental was a posh hotel was to make the understatement of the century. The hotel's lobby was an exceedingly grand one, a towering chamber of marble and gilding. Staffed by impeccably dressed staff, the hotel already emanated an air of luxury and professionalism. It was much nicer than anywhere she'd stayed in her whole life, that was for sure. However, something else overcame the grandeur and elegance of the place.

Even barely after entering the lobby, Lapis registered it. The hotel felt like a church. There was this aura of silent reverence and respect that permeated every square centimetre of the hotel, from the lavishly carpeted floor to the beautiful chapel-esque painted ceiling. The lobby was almost deserted save for a few well-dressed people scattered throughout the numerous leather furnishings and coffee tables that peppered the open space. She had felt their eyes on her and her teammates ever since they'd walked in, but their reactions had certainly been atypical. Some of them nodded in approval at their equipment, seemingly appraising the new arrivals. Others nodded in greeting or tipped their hats. However, the feeling that they were entering someone else's territory as guests. Honoured guests, but guests nonetheless.

"Welcome to the Argus Continental, ladies and gentlemen. How may I be of service?" The concierge asked. He was a young boy, dressed in the standard three-piece suit that seemed to be uniform for all male staff. However, his discomfort was made obvious by his almost imperceptible fidgeting under the suit. More obvious tells manifested in the form of him fiddling with his cuffs or adjusting his tie more frequently than was normal. A rectangular badge pinned to the front of his suit spelt 'intern' in conspicuous black lettering on a brass background.

"I'd like a room for four, please. There should be a reservation for me under the name of Willem," Noctis said, leaning forward over the reception desk. Fingers gloved in black leather began drumming on the surface of the solid marble desktop. The frantic clacking of a keyboard and mouse followed soon after.

"Ah, there it is. A room for four for an indefinite period of time," the intern concierge said, his voice trailing off in apparent nervousness. "Would you mind waiting for a short while? I need to consult my manager."

"Why?" Noctis asked.

"Well, payment usually comes before we give the room to you. But for that… we need a defined duration of stay."

"Ah, that old quibble. Tell me, how long has your manager been working here? Would that career happen to extend through the past decade?"

"Wait.. you know Charrington?"

"Long enough to have done him one or two favours," Noctis said, his face twisting into one of the most vicious grins that Lapis had ever seen. "And he owes me one or two in return. Tell him that Matador is making the request."

"Matador?"

"A name of mine from ages past. Charrington would recognise it, as would the old guard if they're still kicking about," her team leader said wistfully, that grotesque slasher smile still on his face. More alarmingly, his smatchet slid out from his left arm and fell into his hand. Although the weapon was covered in a black matte finish that stopped it from gleaming in the light, it was still relatively easy from the correct angles to see that he was casually holding a massive leaf-shaped blade in the _one_ place where shit like this wasn't tolerated.

Icarus stepped forward, grasping Noctis's left shoulder in an effort to silently tell their lunatic of a leader to stow the hatchet before anybody noticed. If anyone noticed, then all of them were about as good as dead. Luckily, Noctis took the que and the smatchet retracted back into his prosthetic arm. Lapis sighed, not caring as to whether it was due to relief or exasperation.

"Matador? Is that you?" A new voice asked. Its owner was a rather old man of perhaps sixty years of age, walking up to the desk with a clipboard in one hand and a shoulder-fired ATGM dangling from the other.

"Good to see you too, Charrington," Noctis said, visibly relaxing at the sight of the familiar figure. "Looks like you've been keeping in shape."

"Oh, this?" The now identified Charrington asked in clarification, indicating the massive metal tube that he was holding with a single hand. Clearly, despite what his aged physique would have suggested, Charrington was by no means a frail man. "It's not mine. Some genius decided to bring this up to his room. Apparently, after the Management had their way with him, he told them that he was going to try to wrap up a contract where the target had the tendency to travel in his personal armoured car. If you're interested, you could find what's left of him in the furnace room. We were just getting ready to hand him over to our in-house waste disposal service."

"I think I'll pass," her leader replied dispassionately. "However, I think we both know why I'm here. I have some business to attend to."

Charrington passed the anti-tank guided missile to the now very lost intern, waiting as the comparatively younger boy recovered from the stumble caused by the weight of the shoulder-fired weapon before, in a voice too quiet for even Lapis's enhanced hearing to pick up on, somehow signalling the intern to deliver it to some unknown place.

Rather by coincidence, Lapis discovered where the rest of her teammates had wandered off to. As her eyes watched the intern walk off to parts unknown, still struggling with the weight of the giant missile that he had been given, she came across Carmine boredly reading a newspaper.

"Seriously? The Atlas Times?" Lapis asked, casually leaning on the reception counter to turn behind and look at her teammate. "No accounting for taste and all, but don't you know that most if not all of that paper is Atlesian government propaganda?"

Carmine smiled. "The easiest time to see through lies is when they are straight out of the mouth of the horse."

Lapis shrugged, helping herself to a free drink offered to her by another staff member. She took a sip from the tapered glass, garnished with an olive as it was, and savoured the feeling of a good martini. She preferred whiskey, personally, but she wasn't turning down a good drink anytime soon.

"Now, you said you had business to attend to. What sort of business would that be, perchance?" Charrington asked. Now that he was standing just behind the reception desk, Lapis could get a better look at him.

The senior concierge was a man of perhaps sixty, appearing at least to be frail and bowed, with a long, benevolent nose, and mild eyes distorted by thick spectacles. His hair was almost white, but his eyebrows were bushy and still black. His spectacles, his gentle, fussy movements, and the fact that he was wearing an immaculate formal suit, gave him a vague air of intellectuality, as though he had been some kind of literary man, or perhaps a musician.

Lapis wasn't fooled, though. Charrington, if that was in fact truly his name, was definitely one of the most dangerous men in the room. If she had the liberty to guess, she would've thought that the older man was a former Huntsman.

"A room for four. Ozpin's already booked it for us, but the matter of payment is to be determined."

"Ah. I see," Charrington said, leaning forwards on his side of the marble reception desk. "That matter is easily resolved. You could easily pay at the end of your stay; after all, that is the norm for any other hotel."

"Good to see that at least you have some idea of flexibility," Noctis said. "Other Continental hotels can be real sticklers to the rules and regulations."

"I've learnt that sticking to the rules and regulations leaves you vulnerable. Besides, I owe you for defusing that car bomb that was meant for me."

"No problem. The bomb was a hack job anyways; all I had to do was cut the red wire."

Charrington chuckled, but the resulting smile didn't reach his eyes. "That's in the past, though. I trust that you aren't restarting your career now?"

"Unfortunately, no," Noctis muttered, shrugging as he did. "My sister would be pissed if I really got back into the game. Pissed enough to hang me off of a tall building from the back of my undies. You know how she is."

"Ah, the four time Mistrali tournament champion. A real firebrand, that one. Very passionate about her sport, and competitive as well. Send my regards to her, would you?"

"I will. Now, if you would excuse me, could I have the room key? There isn't exactly a lot of daylight left."

"Here you go," Charrington said, passing over the required physical key and keycard - both were required to enter a room, since the Continental took security much more seriously than most other hotels. Noctis reached over the reception desk to grab them. "I am legally obligated to warn you that Argus is hardly the safest city to walk about in after dark. Too many petty criminals stalking the streets. Too many small gangs trying to eke out a living like the rats they are. Rather daunting for the average tourist, in my opinion. However… I trust that they'd have a better reason to be afraid of _you_."

"My team and I, you mean. Having three extra sources of fire support, area denial or summoning reinforcements counts for a lot."

"Certainly that matters as well," Charrington admitted, his eyes darting between herself and Icarus and then Carmine. His gaze, Lapis noted, seemed to linger on their armour and armaments. "However, none of them have had the luxury of building a… reputation or rapport with the underworld. None except you, Matador."

Noctis grinned. "Could you help keep this on the down low? I'd rather not bring the old legend back to life, lest people come out of the woodwork for the chance to kill an urban myth."

"Of course, but then people would miss your performances. Do you think that you would one day return to the arenas, to fell beasts from beyond the walls for the adoring masses?"

"I don't have the time, sorry. Though... I wouldn't be opposed to coming back if they had something big enough. A Tyrant or an elder Nevermore, maybe."

"Truly a shame, that. By the way, I like your new attire," Charrington said, jabbing a finger at Noctis's officer uniform. "It lends you a certain degree of subtlety and stature."

Noctis laughed. "My old Matador outfit had so much gold in it that it might as well have been wearable jewellery. Ah, to be young and foolish again. At least I eventually realised that there was such a thing as _too much_ gold."

Lapis went ahead to take in her surroundings. In the lobby was a grand piano currently being played by a blindfolded woman. Gentle music filled the reception area, putting her somewhat at ease. To one side was the bar where the waiter had gotten the martini from, and she already found herself chewing on the olive provided as garnish. Honestly, she didn't know whether it was meant to be eaten or not. Olives…

How _were_ they doing, anyway? Olive and Brad, the two most trustworthy - in her opinion, at least - people in Vacuo. She hadn't received any status updates from the Legion in Vacuo for a while, but the fact that updates were only required in cases of major events made the lack of updates more reassuring than anything else.

Icarus wandered off to the bar himself, requesting for what looked like a gin and tonic. Lapis moved over to join him.

"A gin and tonic?" She asked, placing her own martini on the table where he had settled his drink. "Never figured you to be the type."

"Just needed something to deal with my jet lag," Icarus muttered, grimacing as he did. "You know how it is. I'm still technically a bird Faunus. Birds find their way back to their nests by sensing the planet's magnetic field, and Faunus with bird traits have the same internal mechanisms. Travelling long distances over a short period of time, say, by flying in an airship, basically scrambles that internal compass."

"Just like my unhealthy tendency to salivate over dead things. My inner scavenger coming out, I guess," Lapis replied, draining the last of her martini. "What do you think about this place? If you ask me, I'd say that it feels like a damn church."

"Why?"

"It's just… there's this quiet atmosphere around here that no one seems to dare to break. It's kind of like being in a cathedral."

"But the silence is golden, yes? You're probably enjoying this as much as I am," Icarus said, taking a sip of his gin and tonic as he did. "There's only so much noise and excitement one can take, after all."

Lapis didn't know how to respond. She wasn't one to meditate, to put it lightly. Her own mindset and the kind of zen serenity that people like Ren promoted were separated about as far apart as possible. How, then, was she supposed to enjoy this unexpected lull in the action? Ah, well. She'd ponder it over more alcohol.

"Could I have a whiskey on the rocks?" A new presence asked. "My partner would like a glass of Sauvignon Blanc. I trust that you'll pick out a good vintage for her."

Lapis turned towards the presence and realised that it was her leader ordering the drinks. "You got the room?"

"Yep. Just waiting for them to clean up the place for us first," Noctis said, getting his drinks and sitting down next to her. Carmine walked over to join them, collecting the glass of wine before sitting down herself.

"Why wine, of all things?" Icarus said, pointing at Carmine's glass of white wine. "The bar here specialises in cocktails and high-brow liquors like whiskey or gin. It says so on the menu itself."

Carmine smiled. "My unique physiology prevents me from experiencing the psychological and physical effects of alcohol. In other words, I cannot become inebriated. Therefore, I drink for the taste."

"And wine tends to be one of the more flavorful drinks," Noctis continued. "Your considerations tend to be different when vodka is nothing but slightly funky water to you."

"How do you know what she likes, boss?" Lapis cut in. "Did you go out to drink with her or something?"

"I did, in fact," Noctis replied. "We got employed by Roman, remember?"

"And you went ahead to drink yourself into a stupor," Carmine jabbed, rolling her eyes as she did. "I had to quite literally tuck you into bed because you were so insensate. Serves you right for drinking so much whiskey."

"I dreamt of a little girl getting devoured by a giant man-eating boar. Cut me some slack, alright?"

Icarus smiled, finishing off his gin and tonic as he did. "Okay. I see how things are now. On another note, what are we gonna do tomorrow? The doctor won't be here until the day after tomorrow."

"Scout out the city, I guess," Lapis said, passing her empty martini glass to the bartender. "Look for places like sniper nests or safehouses in case we need to use them."

"We should get a feel for the situation in Argus as well," Noctis cut in, placing his nearly empty whiskey tumbler on the table. "It's been years since I've set foot in this damned city. Having a general idea about which parties are involved should help us in minimising any potential fallout caused if we have to… escalate things."

"Hopefully things will not come to that," Carmine said, turning to look at her partner. "I understand that there will be... undesirable consequences if we repeat what we did to Roman here."

"That's putting it lightly, but cheers to that sentiment," Noctis replied, raising his whiskey tumbler. Carmine took up her own wine glass, and the two glasses clinked against each other.

Lapis requested for some bar snacks - just buffalo wings, nothing fancy - and asked the bartender about convenient hangover cures. She'd probably need both really soon.

/-/

Tyrian Callows subconsciously adjusted the towering cage placed over his head, rather like an overly large helmet, before relaxing into the overly plush armchair in the office. He had been waiting for quite a while, evidenced by the empty plate on the adjacent coffee table that used to house a number of tiny sandwiches. A similarly empty teacup would have meant that he was in a marginally better mood, but the cup had been previously filled with chamomile tea. Tyrian _hated_ chamomile.

Ah, the sacrifices he made for his goddess. Truly, his devotion knew no bounds.

He shifted the hem of his scholarly robes, trying to make sure that they didn't scrape over the armchair like a rug of some sort. He was supposed to look dignified, damn it.

"Mister Callows," a reedy, sinister voice said. "I am glad that you could spare the time to check on this venture of mine."

Doctor Merlot strolled into his own office, leisurely hanging up his lab coat before settling into his own chair. Two guards, equipped with anonymous military fatigues and body armour, as well as a sealed oxygen supply and full-face masks, took positions on either side of the doorway. Their only identifying insignia was a badge over their left biceps that consisted of the image of a fox and the acronym 'XOF'.

Not a lot of living people knew that that particular badge had a counterpart. It was a mirror image of a different but similar badge that read 'FOX'. He had worn that particular badge, back when he was still trying to figure out the purpose of his life.

FOX. Short for FOXHOUND, a small yet formidable Valean elite black-ops team that he had once been a part of. It couldn't be Atlesian, because Mantle and by extension Atlas had lost their rights for a secret service of their own after the monstrosity that was the Gestapo.

No, but the Atlesians had formed XOF. It was a covert support unit meant to ensure the success of FOXHOUND's missions via tactics such as diversionary attacks, espionage, sabotage and even direct assaults. As XOF was closer to an actual military unit than its more close-knit counterpart, Atlas was put in charge of the unit because it was the one providing all of the unit's hardware and manpower.

Maybe that was why XOF had survived its sister unit. While Vale had dropped FOXHOUND in favour of pandering to Ozpin and Beacon Academy, Atlas still kept its own black-ops unit active. Training had been stepped up to make up for the gap between the normal soldiers that XOF consisted of and the pseudo-Huntsmen that FOXHOUND's operatives had been. It had paid off. Now FOXHOUND was at most an urban myth, a conspiracy theory only subscribed to by tin-foil hat wearing recluses cooped up in basements with only the Internet for company, while XOF was a prospering clandestine army.

Tyrian's scorpion tail began to twitch. He was hardly a relaxed man to begin with, but he and the XOF had… history. Namely, when the time came for FOXHOUND to die, XOF were the ones who did most of the 'cleaning up'. To put it lightly, a lot of gas mask-wearing Atlesians died that day.

"Doctor Merlot," Tyrian drawled, reigning in the reptilian part of his brain. "I see that this venture of yours has been rather… lucrative. Tell me then, how exactly did you profit from a biological weapon which, if I am not mistaken, is still legally AIReD property?"

"No, no. The financial backing came from donors, not from our current project," Merlot replied, taking out a crystal decanter filled with some kind of dark red liquid. Two goblets made of the same material as the decanter were taken out soon after. "But I must admit, the proceeds were plentiful enough to accommodate some creature comforts. Would you like some red wine? I'm told that this is a particularly good vintage."

"Sorry, but I don't drink. Do you perhaps have something that isn't alcohol?"

"Ah," Merlot replied, seemingly gobsmacked by the sudden change in circumstance. "Not really, no. My deepest apologies."

Tyrian smiled. "It doesn't matter. Now that you're here, we can get straight to business."

"Of course. Guards, leave us for the time being," Merlot instructed, gesturing for the guards to vacate the room. Once they had fulfilled that request, the doctor subtly leaned forwards onto this desk before continuing. "Whose interests, if I may ask, are you here to represent?"

"My goddess, of course. Salem."

Merlot sighed. "What further interest could she possibly have in all this? She told us to develop the weapon years ago. We're doing that even today. What does she want now?"

"Routine things. Checking up on the progress you've made, and to deliver a message. She wants the rate of development pushed up so that we have viable payloads ready for delivery in the next few days."

"Viable payloads? In a few days? That's impossible!"

"Why?" Tyrian asked, leaning forwards himself. He made for a much more imposing figure by virtue of his superior height and a scorpion tail whose stinger was already dripping venom.

"I think that it'll be easier to explain if you see for yourself," Merlot said, stowing the unused decanter and goblets back into his desk before standing up. "Follow me."

"Why don't I get a sweet lab coat as well?" Tyrian asked playfully, relishing Merlot's look of absolute annoyance as the scientist slipped on his own coat.

"You can have one _after_ you get ten PhDs of your own, and from a _legitimate_ education institution, mind you, so no buying them off of the black market."

Tyrian put the teasing facade aside, getting up from his own armchair to follow the doctor. "So, we're going to the laboratory?"

"Not really, just a viewing theatre," Merlot said, lab coat swirling behind him as he briskly walked out of his office. "Security, wait here. I shall be back with Mister Callows here relatively soon."

Tyrian looked over his shoulder, verifying that the XOF soldiers had in fact stayed at their positions. One could never be too careful, after all. His own scholarly robes billowed from the motion of him trying and very easily succeeding in keeping up with the head scientist's pace.

"I understand that the weapon you're developing has the potential to be restricted so that it only infects certain groups of people," Tyrian said. "How exactly does it work?"

"It is not a traditional biological weapon like a bacteria or virus, but a parasite. It's life cycle starts as dormant eggs that are taken in by inhalation. These eggs remain dormant until they detect certain aural tones and volumes associated with the vocalisations of their respective host, upon which the eggs hatch, releasing parasites that enter and devour the lungs," Merlot exclaimed excitedly. "These parasites lay eggs of their own which are expelled by coughing, and the cycle continues onwards from there."

"What do you mean by 'specific aural tones and volumes'?"

"Essentially, the nuances of a spoken language," Merlot replied, before opening the door to the viewing theatre overlooking the main laboratory. "We are here. Come, take a closer look."

Tyrian stepped up to the thick bulletproof glass separating the two of them from whatever was in the laboratory, idly observing the scurrying of scientists and lab technicians below.

"Majestic," the Faunus enforcer muttered under his breath. "A scientist is a scientist, even after being disavowed by his own country."

"The facility on the right is where we do the more precise work," Merlot said. "The more… interesting stuff is on the left."

Tyrian looked. Upon a metal gurney was a teenage boy, his lungs already ballooned into bright blue sacs of fluid. A wire extended from an incision in his neck to what appeared to be a large central stereo.

"Looks like you've seen our masterpiece. Unfortunately, not everyone speaks Valean so we had to improvise. We surgically insert a small speaker into the subject's vocal chords, thereby conditioning the parasite to hatch only when the Valean language is spoken."

"A good idea, but I have a question," Tyrian said. "How exactly did you find this parasite in the first place? I understand that this project has been in progress for years at this point, but where was patient zero?"

"Patient zero was from Menagerie. You see, the natural version of this parasite had evolved to target Faunus specifically. Due to their additional animal features and aspects, Faunus have the tendency to increase or decrease the pitch of their voices more than what's biologically possible for humans. The parasite would then activate when detecting those unnatural parts of their voices."

"So you simply narrowed down the scope," Tyrian deduced, his eyes narrowing. "If it's as simple as that, then why the hell are you still taking this long?"

"We have had to cover our tracks," Merlot explained. "This is technically still a branch of AIReD, a rogue branch but a branch nonetheless, and we've since hired staff from all over Remnant. XOF provides armed security, while volunteers from organisations like the Legion now operate as scientists."

"Then how did the counter-espionage aspect go?"

Merlot burst into laughter, helplessly chuckling for a moment before catching himself. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I just didn't know that my colleague was such an idiot!"

"Do enlighten me," Tyrian said.

"Doctor Polendina took the bait, every single morsel of it along with the hook in his throat now. We've fed Polendina and by extension Ozpin bad intel."

"How bad?" The former member of FOXHOUND asked, his smile turning malicious.

"They think that the Order of the Bloated Woman, the local death cult in this god-forsaken city, is behind everything," Merlot declared proudly. "I'm sure that they've been useful in securing test subjects for our efforts, but they barely know anything at all. Whoever Ozpin sent would reach a metaphorical dead end of intel within days. Furthermore, they think that the weapon is meant to target _Faunus_ , not language-speakers."

"Excellent. Since we don't exactly have a time limit anymore, how much of the parasites are you planning to deploy? How are you going to deploy them in the first place?"

"Probably a ton or so of parasites for our first field deployment. We're already planning to slip it onto a freight train heading towards Vale, and I trust that the White Fang would be able to take it from there."

"The White Fang?" Tyrian asked incredulously, breaking out into his own fit of hysterical laughter. "Those useless cunts? They got their own ally blown up by Beacon's agents! What makes you think that they'll be able to pull this off?"

"You'd be surprised as to what sheer numbers and fanaticism can do," Merlot reasoned, sitting down next to Tyrian.

"But still, they're just too unreliable," Tyrian said, sitting in one of the seats of the viewing theatre. "Now, I have another message to deliver to you."

"What is it?"

"A watchman shall be dispatched to ensure the safety of our investment. Our orders shall be Gleipnir, for nothing else shall restrain it. That is all."

"Gleipnir…" Merlot muttered, mulling over the word. "The rope that bound Fenris, the great wolf of legend that would devour the sun and moon when the apocalypse comes."

"Fenris… or _Fenrir_?"

"Fenrir?" Merlot asked, before realising the ramifications of the conclusion he reached. "No, no, not _that_ Fenrir. You've got to be kidding me."

"Unfortunately for you, I am not," a new voice, gruff and deep enough to make one's bones rattle, said. The heavy clacking of living bone armour echoed throughout the mostly empty viewing theatre of the laboratory before a massive figure, armed with a massive sword on his back which was as long as a man was tall, came to a stop in front of the both of them.

"Long time no see, Fenrir," Tyrian said, drinking in the sight of Merlot's horrified facial expression. "I hope that you know your purpose here."

"It would be hard to forget," Fenrir said, shrugging as he did. "Kill anyone and everyone who even looks wrong at Merlot's network of researchers and suppliers."

"But, alas, not too fast," Tyrian said, adjusting the hem of his robes once again. "Our orders are to help Ozpin's new pawns eliminate the cult first. Not directly of course, but making their jobs easier would make them less likely to dig around in all the wrong places."

"Thereby reducing the risk that we'll be found out," Fenrir growled. "I like your thinking."

A loud thud echoed throughout the theatre as Merlot slid to the ground, seemingly having fainted from the shock of having a Grimm Troupe member in close vicinity to him.

"The nightmare swirls and churns unending, dear friend, but this…" Tyrian trailed off. "This could really stir up the old pot, if you know what I mean."

Fenrir smiled. "What's wrong, a little tongue-tied?"

Tyrian snorted in amusement. "You're sure enjoying the chance to let out hot air, I see."

"At least I still have the necessary apparatus to do so," Fenrir japed. "Would be hard to spew bullshit without lungs, I guess."

Tyrian rolled his eyes before taking out his scroll and starting to scroll through his social media feed. The two of them had more than enough time to kill before the parasites were completed, so he might as well relax now.

Nothing much could go wrong at this stage, he felt. Only time would tell as to whether he'll be right or wrong.

 **(More setup here, but why not? Might as well engineer a perfect storm since I now have the time to do so, after all.)**


	25. Delusive Sanctuary

**(I said that I would have another chapter up by December, but then real life got in the way. I am so sorry for being two months late, but please accept this monster of a chapter as compensation. In those two months, I have discovered Fate and Evangelion, both of which have proven to be excellent sources of... inspiration. Also, the little speech Bardiel gives is inspired primarily by its equivalent in NGE: Nobody Dies - an Evangelion fic by Gregg Landsman, and one that I'd recommend checking out!)**

The Continental was a very luxurious hotel, that was for sure. The executive suite that their team leader had secured for them was a large and spacious affair, with easily enough room to fit all of their equipment and more. The nearby executive lounge was equally opulent, well-stocked with food and drinks as well as being well-furnished to boot. To cater for Huntsman guests, as Icarus had very recently discovered, workshop stations had been installed in the lounge.

Therein laid the problem. Noctis tended to have an unhealthy tendency to tinker with his equipment when suffering from his now normal bouts of insomnia. The presence of a readily available workshop just enabled this unhealthy tendency. And then there was the horrible things that he caused when he was at it.

While covering his eyes in order to spare himself the agony of having his retinas constantly being burned from the lights flickering on and off every so often - his eyes were more sensitive than the normal human baseline due to him still technically being a dove Faunus - Icarus found his way to the door of the workshop station where his leader had hunkered down. He knocked on the door, knuckles already white from stress and pain.

"Yes?" Noctis asked irritably from within.

"Icarus here," he replied. "Just came to check up on things."

"Ha. Very funny. Don't try to bullshit me, we both know that you'd rather be sleeping now. Anything else?"

Icarus sighed. "Nothing much, just that our sleeping arrangements are… worrying. That and the shit you're stirring is probably keeping the whole floor up."

"Fine, then. Come in."

Icarus could have sworn that he had walked into a junkyard. On the workbench were microscopes and other devices that he guessed were for nanotechnology, but other than that he had no clue. There were multiple round grenade-sized metal spheroids on said workbench placed in a somewhat neat line, one which was opened up to reveal innards filled with components that he didn't recognise. Next to that was what seemed to be the core of said device, while both of those components were again connected to a computer which was displaying a veritable wall of data that he couldn't decipher.

"What's all this?" Icarus asked, gesturing at the mutilated radio on the workbench.

"Oh, this?" Noctis replied, an expression that positively emanated pride on his face. He was currently dressed in a buttoned-up lab coat instead of his combat uniform, but in spite of the presumably friendly smile on his face - some might say that it was because of that smile in the first place - he still reminded Icarus uncannily of a hungry predator. "Just cobbling some extra components together to give us a tactical advantage of sorts. Even you'd appreciate it."

"What are you implying?" Icarus asked suspiciously, narrowing his eyes.

"That you're not exactly the most discerning man when it comes to gadgets. Okay, back on topic now. I've essentially managed to create a localised fission reaction in this ball here."

"That's all? Then explain why the damned lights and _everything else_ connected to the electrical grid keep jumping on and off."

"I'm getting there," Noctis snapped, though not antagonistically. "The fission reaction then causes an electromagnetic pulse that disables electronic devices within a radius that I still haven't accurately quantified."

"So you've been making EMP grenades."

"You've got it!" Noctis interjected, flicking his two forefingers in Icarus's direction. "You see, I've been trying to set it so that it had the active radius of a normal hand grenade. Evidently, from the fact that I've been blowing out the electronics of the entire floor, I haven't managed to succeed."

"So you've been trying to make homemade EMP grenades with… what, trial and error?" Icarus asked irritably, drawing out a stool to sit on. Noctis, unsurprisingly, was sitting on another one which was right in front of the work table. "You know that you're making my sleep situation worse than it needs to be, even if I'm hungover."

Indeed, it was quite bad. Although the beds themselves were extremely comfortable, befitting a hotel where one had to pay with literal gold coins, their arrangement was another story. They had been supplied with two double beds instead of the assumed four single ones, meaning that the four of them had been forced to pair up.

Carmine had reserved Noctis as a bed-mate suspiciously quickly, so he was stuck with Lapis. It would have been fine, given the fact that Lapis was indeed rather petite outside her armour, but her semblance had proven to be a sticking point.

Noctis sighed. "It can't be _that_ bad."

"You saw what happened to Carmine's shoulder when she fell asleep on it that one time. It looked like a goddamn tank had rolled over it."

"And that's because Carmine doesn't have aura. You, on the other hand, do."

"I can't activate my aura in my sleep, and you know that."

Noctis sighed. "I know. Just don't worry so much, alright? Trust your partner."

"I'll try," Icarus said, before turning back to the radio. "But what about your situation?"

"What?"

"The Continental is a safe place, you said that yourself. If that's true, then why are you so stressed out?"

"I'm not stressed," Noctis replied, rolling his eyes as he did.

"You start tinkering with your equipment when you're stressed. We've established that already," Icarus stated evenly, trying his best to sound somewhat soothing. "So what's up? Anything happened at Beacon?"

"It's… nothing," Noctis grumbled. "There's just a school dance that's on this weekend, and Pyrrha's going. I probably won't be back on time to be her bodyguard, so it just feels like I'm guilty of dereliction of duty."

"Dereliction of duty? Heh, you sound like my old CO."

"You mean Adam?"

"Yep, that's the right bastard. But seriously, she'll be fine," Icarus said, leaning back in his seat. "What's the worst that can happen?"

Noctis sighed, taking a deep breath before replying. "A lot of things. Trust me when I say that the number of kinds of ways that everything can go tits up will blow your mind. Shoving hundreds of teenagers into a confined space for a few hours is just asking for _something_ to happen, consequences be damned."

"And something bad happening to Pyrrha is as likely as the Arkbird's laser lance misfiring and vaporizing the entirety of Beacon," Icarus said sardonically. "Do you know why?"

"No, not really."

"It's because she's always got _you_ looming over her shoulder. Has anyone ever told you that you're one scary son of a bitch? Because you are. Trust me, no one will even dare to try anything with _your_ sister."

"If they do?" Noctis asked, his voice taking on a deeply menacing tone that contrasted greatly with the casual work clothes he was wearing.

"Then I'll give you my full blessings to slip a fucking grenade under their pillow like the Tooth Fairy's demented cousin. Trust me, she'll be fine."

"Thanks, Icarus," Noctis replied, subconsciously reaching up to tip his hat - an antiquated but still respectful gesture of gratitude - before drawing his hand back when he realised that his peaked cap wasn't on him. He sighed. "Just pretend that you didn't see that. Anyways, would you mind helping me wrap things up?"

Icarus snickered internally, but outwardly schooled his expression. "What else do you need, boss?"

"All you need to do is to close that lead-lined case up. The process is relatively simple, since screwing a panel as thick as that back in shouldn't be too hard for even you, so I think you'll be fine. I'll settle the grenades myself since the mechanisms are more delicate."

Icarus huffed in mock outrage, getting up to find a screwdriver and some matching screws. "Are you saying that I'm barely good enough to screw in a panel?"

"I'm saying that you shouldn't mess around with delicate electronics that belong to other people," Noctis muttered. "On that note, don't poke around in the box. The stuff inside isn't exactly safe to handle with your hands if you're not wearing a hazmat suit."

"Alright," Icarus said, moving towards the screwdriver on the bench before he noticed something. There was a weird clicking sound that reminded him vaguely of something that he very dearly hoped was just his imagination. "Do you hear that clicking sound?"

"What clicking sound?" Noctis asked, before he made a sound of realisation. "Oh, you mean _that_ clicking sound. I see."

"Where's it coming from?" Icarus asked.

"It's nothing, just my Geiger counter."

"What?" Icarus yelled, backing away from the workbench and the suddenly much more terrifying box.

"Oh, you didn't realise why the box was lead-lined? I'm trying to cause a self-contained microscopic nuclear reaction, of course there'd be some radioactive matter involved," Noctis replied casually. "Said gamma radiation ionises with the ambient atmosphere to send out an electrical field that generates a split-second surge of twelve thousand five hundred volts per meter on nearby electronic devices to short them out, but it appears that for now 'nearby' means the entire floor."

Icarus paused in shock for a moment before deciding that he had had quite enough for one day. "You're not kidding, are you? I'm going to get cancer from being around this shit," he snapped. " _Everyone_ in this fucking building is going to get cancer at the rate that your Geiger counter is ticking. Can you at least _warn_ us, your teammates, before you bring _radioactive material_ anywhere near us?"

Noctis sighed exasperatedly. "It's just a trace amount of uranium at most. This is a _microscopic_ reaction, after all, not a damned nuclear bomb. You'd be more likely to get cancer from sitting on a barrel of nuclear waste for five minutes than if you hugged this to sleep for the rest of your life. At least I've settled _that_ part."

Icarus sighed in resignation. "Fine. You've convinced me, but I'll be careful all the same. I like being alive and without tumours, after all," he replied, picking up the panel and only now noticing the number of holes in it. "Tell me, how many screws were keeping this box of death together?"

"Probably something like eight or twelve, I didn't keep count. They're pretty small ones too."

"Eight or twelve?" Icarus asked incredulously, glancing around for a convenient pile of identical screws. However, there were no screws, identical or different, to be found. "Where are they?"

"They should be here-" Noctis began, waving his hand towards a conveniently empty space on the workbench before realising that said space was empty. "Fuck me running."

"What?"

"I think I knocked them off the bench by accident. In that case…" Noctis paused, gesturing vaguely at an exceptionally cluttered section of the workshop's floor. "They should be around there. Sorry."

Icarus's hand flew to his face, running over his lower face and jawline in a clear signal of stress. "Does your arm have a metal detector or something to find the screws?"

"Not really. I could use it, but I can't use it safely now in case the metal detector interferes with the readings I'm getting here."

"Back the hell up. So I can't find the screws without a metal detector, but I can't use a metal detector without the screws?"

"It isn't that much of a Catch-22 situation, you know? You could always find the screws by hand."

"Can the person with a literal metal arm do that instead?" Icarus snapped. "There's no way that I'm going to mess up my hands in that pile of sharp metal shit, especially if I might have to take some really hard shots tomorrow."

"I would, but do you _want_ to know exactly what happens if I miscalculate this?"

"It can't be _that_ bad, boss."

"Anything can happen when you're dealing with fission reactions. Too much uranium and I've made a miniature tactical nuke instead of an EMP grenade. Too little and this thing becomes nothing but a really expensive rock," Noctis said monotonously. "And I like having my stuff do what it's supposed to do."

Icarus stared at him for a while, trying to deduce what exactly had happened to his leader in his formative years before coming to the conclusion that he was better off not knowing. "Is there something to protect my hands, at least?"

"I think there should be a spare pair of work gloves near the door."

Icarus got the gloves from the hook they were hanging off of, pulling on said gloves to ensure a good fit before crouching down to look for the screws. "The things I do for my friends sometimes…" he muttered.

"Tell me about it," Noctis snarked, still calibrating the fission core of one of his grenades.

If looks could kill, the glare Icarus shot his leader would have caused him to spontaneously combust. Alas, that was not the case.

/-/

For once in a very long while, Noctis didn't dream of Yharnam.

He was standing underneath a marble memorial arch, standing in front of a single chain that separated the ceremonial eternal flame from the rest of the memorial square. In front of the flame was the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the words on the tombstone inscribed in Valean, while innumerable names were etched into the stone pillars of the arch. Bundled in his hands were two bouquets of flowers.

He left the tomb, leaving one of his bouquets on the tombstone before moving on. He walked over to the left column - why the left, he didn't know - and began scanning the names covering said column for the two specific ones he was looking for. He was looking for his parents' names, he realised. Unfortunately, he didn't know exactly what he was looking for.

It would have been so much simpler if his semblance cut away chunks of himself at a time - if it did, at least he'd know what parts had been lost and take steps to fill those gaps. In reality, everything just _faded_. First the little details were lost, like what colour his childhood bedsheets were. Then bigger things vanished, like names and faces. He didn't even know what his parents had looked like, much less their names.

There were thousands upon thousands of individual, unique names on this face of the column alone. Finding two among maybe even a hundred thousand was all but impossible.

Nameless, faceless phantoms lingering in the past. Before the catastrophe, there had been nothing. He had lived as a child was wont to do, indulging in behaviour more like juvenile hedonism than anything else. After Mountain Glenn, his life had _purpose_. He had someone to protect and others, who would see his charge come to harm, to eliminate with extreme prejudice.

"I do believe that you're at the wrong place," an all too familiar voice said. "This is the Great War memorial. The Mountain Glenn memorial is the obelisk outside, but you're welcome to linger."

He turned towards the person who spoke, all but jumping with shock when he saw the other person. The first thing that was obvious was the skull-visaged faceplate placed over a gas mask. A heavy wool greatcoat flapped in a slight breeze from the beautiful morning surrounding them, while an ornate rapier hung from a sheath connected by wires to a power pack on the figure's back.

The person before him _was_ him, as far as he could tell.

"Who are you?" He asked, reaching to his side to draw his cane-sword but hastily withdrawing his hand when he realised that his weapon was not there.

"If you're worried about that, then don't be," the figure said. "An entomologist can't be an ant despite knowing everything there is to know about those miserable creatures. I may know you better than most, prodigal child, but despite the similarities of our forms I am nothing like you."

"Then what are you?"

"That is for me to know and for you to find out," the figure said, before snapping his fingers. "Please, I hope you won't lose your head over something as petty as all this."

"What are you talking about?" Noctis asked.

"You'll understand soon enough. Just ask Lapis," the figure said. "That is, if you can reach her."

"What?" Noctis yelled, lunging for his facsimile but simply going through the figure as if it weren't there.

Then, he saw something horrific. A massive alien monstrosity, equally comprised of sleek black tentacles and bones covered with rotting flesh, loomed over him. It had a gaping hole in place of a face and that hole only contained an empty expanse of pure darkness that somehow conveyed its emotions better than any normal visage. It hovered in the air, tentacles lashing and four skeletal human-like limbs grasping at nothing, before it silently touched down on the marble grounds of the memorial.

Noctis prepared to run for his life, pitiful as it was, as it approached but found that his legs refused to move even an inch. The creature got up on its four skeletal limbs before slipping towards him with cat-like grace, eventually getting close enough to be within arm's reach. He tried to struggle as it reached towards him but then found that his _entire body_ was paralysed - not just his legs - and was helpless to resist as the massive rotting hand caressed his cheek almost lovingly.

" _Is this what fatherhood feels like? To raise an otherwise valueless thing, to enlighten it and watch as new knowledge permanently brands itself upon its mind?_ " It garbled, speaking in a language that registered in Noctis's brain as lisping accented English riddled with static. The hand on his face didn't exactly feel unpleasant, with the half-rotten flesh hanging off of the finger bones radiating a warmth that felt like burning wax, but by _god_ was it alien. " _Tis not an unpleasant experience in my opinion, no._ "

Noctis couldn't do anything other than breathe and stare blankly with wide eyes, his muscles so badly locked up that it was impossible to do anything else. The abomination eventually noticed, withdrawing its mockery of a human hand before _chuckling_ in a manner that made Noctis feel like his very sanity was dripping out of his ears.

" _I see. Not enough insight, then? Please do get some more before we meet again, my dear. That would make our future meetings much more productive,_ " it screeched, staring at him with what definitely felt like malicious glee from the abyss that was its face. " _But do be careful… it simply wouldn't do for you to rot in Mother Kos's Nightmare, not at all. I shall put in a good word for you, but for now… goodbye."_

Noctis found his body released from the paralysis that had taken him, only to find that in the absence of his control most of his muscles had gone limp. He collapsed unceremoniously to the ground, aware of nothing except that he had subconsciously curled up into a fetal position, before his eyes slammed shut and he knew no more.

/-/

Smoke. Fire. Screaming. The pungent smell of cordite and gunpowder in the air, along with the deafening booms from the innumerable anti-aircraft guns that covered the flak towers dotting the landscape. Streams of glowing tracer rounds and the orange bursts of light from larger-calibre explosive shells lit up the night - at least, the portions of it that were not illuminated by the scarlet moon above.

It was a scene of biblical proportions. The desert sand itself was almost completely obscured by Grimm of all shapes and sizes, some she could name and others that he couldn't, but she had definitely seen all of them before. Opposing the tide were a collection of Huntsmen that she had seen only once, each one distinct from the others in a way that made for a mesmerising array of colours and styles. Still, their numbers only accounted for a drop in the ocean.

The sheer numbers of Grimm crushed them. Some died on their feet, impaled or cut down or bled out by the monsters that swarmed them. Others died screaming, torn apart or eaten alive by the ravenous horde. For all their firepower and combat prowess, these Huntsmen were essentially putting on their last stand.

Despite the state that the place was in, Valhalla had been and would always be her home. Over there to the east was her school, currently being bombarded by the biologically engineered artillery cannons grafted onto the backs of two batteries of Ariadnes - eight in total, all pummelling what appeared to be classrooms where she knew children were hiding inside with the closest existing Grimm approximation of 155mm howitzer fire. Slightly to the north-west was her family home, which had only a few seconds ago tumbled to the desert sand in the form of a burnt-out husk of a building.

"What did you bring me back here for?" Lapis snarled, turning to the figure next to her with nothing less than rage in her mind.

A deafening roar suddenly reached their ears, the sudden silence that came after reminding Lapis of a predator prowling through the jungle. What seemed to be her _own armour_ came barrelling through a building, a hapless ape-like Beringel already impaled on the familiar shape of Gungnir. The armoured figure tore the dying Grimm off of its lance, flinging the smoking corpse away with an air of contempt.

The figure roared again, a _mouth_ on the armour opening to reveal a maw filled with too many razor sharp teeth - rather like that of a shark. It grabbed the tusks of a charging Borbatusk and slammed it into the ground before pinning the creature down and starting to _devour_ it. Hunks of smoking flesh were torn out by the figure's teeth and subsequently swallowed by a maw dripping with black ichor, the Grimm's squealing slowly becoming less and less energetic as it was eaten alive before ceasing completely. The other Grimm started to keep their distance from the horrific scene.

"What the hell is that?" Lapis yelled, backing away from the sight. This wasn't her. That wasn't the Allfather. It couldn't be.

"Art," the faux-Noctis said. "An exquisite piece showcasing the true nature of humankind, revealed at last to the world."

"How does _this_ have any bearing on human nature?" Lapua asked incredulously, gesturing cautiously at the figure which was already finished with its meal. It flung aside the already disintegrating carcass, which was mostly bones by now, and charged back into the by now far more apprehensive swarm.

"The man underneath the armour was a priest," the greatcoat-wearing facsimile said. "Funny, how those who claim to spread the word of God tend to themselves be the worst examples of humanity. So close to God in His Heaven, and yet behaving like worms…"

The armoured figure let out a piercing scream, shrieking in a way that no human could ever do. It impaled, crushed and smashed through the horde with all the grace of a mindless beast. It ripped and tore until finally there was nothing left in the vicinity to challenge it. Finally, it collapsed to its knees - slamming Gungnir point-first into the ground - and it seemed to hang listlessly from the arm grasping its weapon before the blue lights on the helmet started to fade into nothing.

"Ah, my cue to enter from the left," Noctis's impostor said. "I would advise you to stay back. Deals with the devil are hardly amiable at the best of times, after all, and this time you might actually find this one educational."

The figure strode forwards, his form changing once again into something much more familiar. A wool greatcoat transformed into bat-like wings draped around the figure like a cape. Previously human limbs lengthened and thinned out into insect-like mockeries of themselves, already growing a thick layer of chitin for protection. A helmeted head cracked and morphed into an insectoid two-pronged headdress, and what was once a face has become an expressionless bone-white mask save for two glowing _scarlet_ eyes that danced with malicious amusement.

"You!" Lapis yelled, rushing forwards to tear apart the monster before her but finding an invisible barrier to be separating them.

" _How… astute of you,_ " the abomination said. " _However, would you kindly be quiet? I would like you to pay some attention._ "

"Why? You want to mess with my head even more?"

" _Something like that_ ," the Troupe Master said, turning to the insensate armoured figure. It stirred slightly upon noticing its presence, trying and failing to get up and tear the demon before it apart. The Troupe Master's organic cloak unfurled into numerous cloth-like strips which seemed to have a mind of their own, curling into pointed spikes that drilled into the ground before erupting out around the suit of armour and pinning it to the ground in the form of binding tendrils.

" **You… I'll kill you, I'll kill you, I'll kill you!** " The armour roared in a voice that Lapis hadn't heard for months, and still dearly missed.

"Lazuli?" She asked herself, trying and failing to comprehend exactly what this hinted about her previous mental co-occupant.

" _Ah… a former avatar of myself, albeit a lesser one. A mindless tool in all but name, and yet it speaks. Yet, it survives? Admirable._ "

" **You have no right to say that, bastard. Was it not you which threw me away like so much trash?** "

" _Trash? You exceeded my expectations by surviving this long after being cut off from the greater whole - I expected you to live on as an idiot, barely better than a base animal_ ," the Troupe Master said, its words carrying equal tones of pride and disdain. " _But here you are, persisting through the centuries by the simple act of parasitism._ "

" **It's symbiosis, not parasitism. I benefit from this arrangement by guaranteeing my own survival, and the host gains abilities that they would not obtain otherwise** ," Lapis - no, the armour, retorted angrily. The armour continued struggling futilely against its bonds. " **But you don't get that, don't you? You take so much, and what have you given back in return? Nothing! Absolutely nothing!** "

" _There is a fine line between symbiosis and parasitism, as you very well know_ ," the Troupe Master said, the contempt in its voice more than making up for its entirely blank face lacking the ability to display emotions. " _Tell me, do you delude yourself on a regular basis or are you just ignorant?_ "

" **You? The Crawling Chaos itself, the creature with a thousand masks, lecturing me about falsehoods? Talk to me after you learn the meaning of hypocrisy**."

" _At least I don't blatantly lie to my pawns_ ," the Troupe Master snapped, moving over to behind the armour. The cloak attached to its right arm hardened into a curved armblade, and then Lapis saw that same armblade slash into the armour's back with supernatural speed. It's left hand reached into the gaping wound in the armour's back, pulling out a figure that caused Lapis to scream in horror at the sight of it.

It was as if someone had tried to fashion a human out of candle wax before accidentally leaving it out next to a fireplace. Skin and flesh alike seemed to have melted and congealed in a simply unnatural manner, and Lapis couldn't help but notice the gruesome wounds where it appeared that parts of him had adhered to the inside of the armour and had been torn off by the force of the man's removal. His bones had evidently shattered in innumerable places, with jagged pieces of ribs and only God knew what else jutting out from where they had pierced his skin, while portions of misshapen internal organs were visible through places where the malformed flesh failed to grow over.

Despite all that, the man - no, the Allfather, she corrected herself - before her was still alive. One lung visible from a gaping hole in his side still visibly inhaled and exhaled, while a partially exposed and visible heart still pumped blood with frightening regularity.

" _You pitiful thing…_ " Troupe Master Grimm muttered. " _Bringing this upon yourself, you surely deserved this damnation but yet I find myself unable to end it._ "

The man reached up with a trembling left hand, trying and failing to grasp the Troupe Master's arm with a grip that the latter almost casually shook off. Upon the back of that hand was a single sigil, a rune of some sort that glowed with the colour of blood. "You…" he wheezed. "Why..."

" _As I said, pitiful,_ " the Troupe Master hissed, the tendrils binding the armour suddenly jerking violently and sending the armour sprawling onto the ground. " _This is hardly entertaining at all, and it needlessly cripples a good catalyst like you all for the survival of some… parasite_."

The crippled man's breathing became even more laboured, and even through the melted skin and flesh Lapis could see two eyes glimmer with desperation. "Please…" the man wheezed. "Help..."

The Troupe Master looked at him. " _Help? Are you willing to make a deal with the devil, then? To sell your soul to preserve your mind?_ "

"Yes…"

" _Very well_ ," the Troupe Master said. A black tar-like substance suddenly began to seep out from the sand underneath the man, slowly creeping up and over the man's ruined body to cover him. " _Father Mihaly Ignatius Argent, Allfather of Valhalla, are you willing to sacrifice your humanity to save it?_ "

What? Lapis slumped onto a nearby wall, using it to support her irrelevant body as her mind raced. Argent? Allfather? Sacrifice?

"Yes…" the now identified Allfather - and wasn't _that_ a massive revelation - forced out. Upon his final words, the streams of black tar wrapping around him abruptly thickened before violently dragging him into the sand. The bindings around the now empty armour withdrew, reforming the cloak that they had previously created.

Lapis stared blankly at the scene before her, barely noticing the Troupe Master approaching before it snapped its chitinous fingers in front of her face with a loud clack. " _Don't lose focus yet, young lady. After all, the best part is yet to come!_ "

"You… why don't I remember all this? You're just fucking with my head, aren't you?"

" _Maybe I am…_ " the Troupe Master suggested, its crimson eyes glinting with amusement. " _But maybe I've done it already_."

Suddenly, Lapis heard sobbing.

" _Excellent. The pieces fall into place…_ "

A younger version of herself scampered into view, eyes frantically searching for safety while her face was covered in tears. The numerous cuts and bruises on her bore testament to the fact that she had only managed to survive up to now by sheer luck, and the look of absolute horror on her face hinted to what she had seen. Even now, while looking for a place to hide and wait out the attack, she still looked to be on the verge of hysteria.

"A-Allfather?" Her younger self asked meekly, and said meekness caused bile to rise up in Lapis's own throat. That meekness was ingrained in her, as she very well knew herself, by the Allfather having the habit of literally emanating awe whenever he was in public. How the hell that everyone else _except_ those living in Valhalla knew about his semblance being emotion manipulation, she didn't know.

The armour didn't respond, probably because there was currently no one inside said armour. The younger version of herself rushed towards the armour, stumbling when she put her weight on her right foot but managing to not fall. Lapis vaguely remembered having twisted that exact same ankle when fleeing from the Horseman during Valhalla's fall, so at least that detail matched up. Finally, her younger self reached the armour, stopping to hunker behind the remains of a stone wall.

"A-Allfather?" She asked again. This time, she started to creep closer to the armour. Lapis's own viewing position allowed her to notice the armour's head turn slightly towards the approaching child. An almost invisible slit on an otherwise smooth and unmarked yet protruding armoured faceplate opened up with a hiss, revealing a single line that glowed with blood red light.

That eye left a trail of luminescent crimson in her vision as the armour suddenly lunged, grabbing Lapis's small hand with its own massive gauntlet. The bear-eared Faunus girl screamed, the sickening crunch of bones being pulverised echoing throughout the silent streets.

Then she smelled the scent of burning flesh coming from the hands of both her younger self and her current self, and she collapsed to the sand below from the agonising pain of what felt like a series of intricate symbols being branded into the top of her left hand. The armour bared its teeth, dragging the girl closer and closer until it was pressing her against itself before beginning to pull her _into_ itself. Composite armour plates split open with chilling quietness as the blank-faced colossus swallowed her with its body, eventually covering the profile of Lapis's younger self completely.

" _Lying parasite,_ " the Troupe Master's voice seethed above her. Lapis stumbled back to her feet, scrambling away from the entity that had just appeared next to her without any warning whatsoever. " _Why hide the truth? Truth is a beautiful thing indeed, but it must be served in minute parts of the greater whole to be truly savoured_."

The armour staggered to its feet - it was definitely the armour and not Lapis - and dragged itself into a shambling gait, its shuffling kicking up ungodly amounts of sand. The weapon in its grip - Gungnir, her familiar weapon - seemed to twist on a molecular level, the seemingly normal weapon deforming into a delicate-looking two-pronged spear seemingly made out of only two pieces of precisely twisted metal before unfolding into a massive double-bladed greatsword. The twin blades, attached end to end by a single handle and a sharpened handguard physically connecting the two pieces of metal like an outwardly curving bridge, were rounded without any semblance of hard angles yet tapered to a somewhat blunted point. They gleamed in the moonlight with unnatural brightness, and to be frank Lapis thought that it looked… alien.

" _A fake of a fake of a weapon that never even existed…_ " the monster in front of her muttered darkly. " _There never was a Lance of Longinus in the first place. Until I made one, that is_."

"This isn't how it went…" Lapis said quietly, more aimed towards herself than towards the Troupe Master. "Solis and I wounded the Allfather and then the Allfather gave me his armour before dying… not this!"

" _Why not_?" The Troupe Master asked, its voice suddenly becoming dangerous. It looked at her with crimson eyes that positively gleamed with malice, clearly expecting her to come to her own conclusions.

"It's just…" Lapis began, before pausing in horror. "No. No, no, no, no, no! This can't be how it ends…"

The armour seemed to metamorphosize before her very eyes, the previously angled plating of it morphing to adopt smooth curves and flowing lines that imparted a more human shape. Unnaturally slender and lithe instead of the stout and girthy figure that she usually cut in her armour, Lapis realised with a start that there definitely wasn't any space left inside the body for a pilot.

" _This is indeed how your story ends,_ " the Troupe Master intoned. " _To die alone, betrayed by the very thing that you had entrusted your life to… and to die in vain as everything crumbles around you_."

The armour's neck cracked forwards into a hunched posture, while the head seemed to elongate and the mouth drew yet wider, and soon enough a previously human head was replaced by an eyeless grinning cetaceous one - akin to that of a baleen whale, but with the baleen replaced by the jagged teeth of a predator - that was featureless save for the mouth that took up the entirety of the face.

"Why don't I remember any of this?" Lapis asked again, glancing from the scene in front of her to the Troupe Master and back again with what seemed like absolute terror on her face. "Is this all a hallucination, an elaborate lie?"

" _I do not lie_ ," the Troupe Master snapped. " _I merely give pieces of inconvenient truths at the most inopportune times_."

"Bullshit," Lapis snapped. "You're a liar and a hypocrite. That's all you are, a monster hiding behind a web of lies and pretending towards godhood!"

" _I pretend towards godhood?_ " The Troupe Master asked, its voice becoming dangerously quiet.

Lapis would have responded with something pithy and anatomically impossible had the monster beside her not suddenly grabbed her hand. She screamed again as the runes branded on her left hand burned anew, the Troupe Master seemingly effortlessly lifting her by a single arm. " _You **dare** call me a liar? You **dare** call me a pretender?_" It roared, staring into her eyes with red eyes that now burned with wrath. " _Lying is **beneath** me, child! If you had control over every single dream and memory humanity dares call its own, would you even **bother** to lie? Do you seriously think that I would bother **pretending** towards godhood?_"

"N-No…" she stammered, too startled and terrified by the entire situation to say anything else. Then, she screamed again as the runes flared with newfound heat. The Troupe Master flung her away with strength that should have been beyond its thin frame, sending her flying before causing her to slam bodily against the sandstone wall of a ruined homestead.

" ** _Suffer_** ," the Troupe Master snarled, tightening its hand around a softly glowing red light. The sigils on her hand glowed brighter in response, and suddenly Lapis found herself being consumed by the very same armour that she had seen engulf her younger self. The armour was _supposed_ to be familiar, she had worn it practically every day when she was in the Legion, but now it wasn't.

Her neural interface wasn't in English so that she could understand it, but in runes that hurt so much to look at that she would have looked away if they hadn't been projected right in front of her face. The inside of the suit started filling with an amber liquid that Lapis knew was the liquid armour that provided most of the armour's protective capabilities, and soon enough it had filled up the entire socket where she was housed. She _should_ have been drowning, but she was somehow able to breathe in said fluid. Was it oxygenated? She didn't know.

Lapis stumbled to her feet, using the wall to stabilise herself before spitting out the blood that had welled up in her mouth. However, instead of blood, that same orange fluid splattered onto the sand below. She stared in shock, subconsciously running her tongue along her teeth before realising that her teeth were _sharp_ and there were _too many_ of them.

Suddenly checking her own self-awareness, she realised that she couldn't feel her own body anymore. The armour's mouth moved when hers did, its limbs moved when hers did, and so on. For all intents and purposes, she wasn't inside the armour, she _was_ the armour.

" _I believe that it is time to end this_ ," the monster said, gesturing towards her. " _Would you kindly **die screaming** like the pitiful worm you are_?"

The armour containing her younger self turned towards her, slowly but surely starting to gain its full capacities. It was honestly a surreal scene, herself being bathed in the scarlet light from the fires that had all but engulfed Valhalla while the other version of her was lit by the moonlight. Now that she was far away enough from her other self, Lapis could easily observe that the armour's plating was painted in a pure white. Like a ghost… or an angel.

Lapis stumbled, collapsing against the wall into a sitting position as her legs gave out from under her. The armour containing her younger self bared its teeth in its terrifying rictus-esque grin more befitting of an antediluvian predator while it moved closer and closer, the massive double-bladed weapon in its hands contorting back into the two-pronged spear that she had seen previously.

" **No, no, no, please God don't let it end like this…** " she rambled, backing up against the wall at her back. Her voice sounded inhumanly deep to her own ears, as if she were speaking with the armour's own voice box. The other armoured figure advanced on her, flipping the spear in its hand into a reverse grip - probably in preparation to throw it.

The figure reared back and threw the spear.

Lapis _screamed_ , throwing up her left hand in a futile effort to block the spear while shutting her eyes in preparation for the pain.

The spear didn't make contact.

What?

Lapis opened her eyes. In front of her hand was a barrier of shimmering concentric orange octagons, and the spear was somehow hovering just on the other side of it as if the conceptual weapon had been frozen in mid-air.

" **Thank God-** " she began.

The spear continued moving.

The last thing Lapis felt before the darkness claimed her was the spear punching through her left eye socket and impaling her head.

/-/

Noctis's awareness returned with the realisation of his harsh reality. He was back in the Forbidden Woods, in the middle of a large clearing in the trees. Shame.

"Motherfu-" he began, before suddenly being wracked by a spate of heavy coughing. When he pulled away, he realised that his clenched fist - which he had instinctively placed in front of his mouth - was speckled with blood.

"Blood?" He muttered, and while spitting out the rest of the blood in his mouth to get rid of the lingering taste of iron and trying to clean it off of his face with a wool-covered sleeve - he seemed to be dressed in his Yharnam clothes instead of his normal combat attire - he noticed that the clearing he was in housed a dilapidated graveyard. In the centre of that graveyard was a giant tombstone… no, it wasn't a tombstone. It was a goddamn monolith.

"What is this?" Noctis asked himself, running his flesh hand over the surface of the engraved face. The etching was done in a language that he couldn't even identify, much less read or understand, so the purpose of the structure was lost on him.

"It's a grave," an inhumanly deep voice rumbled.

"What, you think I don't know that? If it's not a grave, the what the hell-" Noctis began, before glancing at the person who had replied. That is, if the entity before him could even be considered a person at all.

They were dressed in an intricate armour of bone plates, and, from the way the plates seemed to shift by themselves, the armour appeared to be a living organism. Two eyes on a helm the shape of a wolf's head glowed with a malevolent crimson light while a black membranous cape behind it twisted and turned as if it were a living construct. Noctis could have _sworn_ that he saw a multitude of small eyes nestled in the cracks between the bone armour plates open and glare at him before closing again.

"Now I know why _he_ likes you," the figure said, slamming a massive sword point-first into the loamy soil at their feet. In Noctis's opinion, it looked more like a tombstone marked with runes that were absolute agony to look at for too long than a sword. "You're braver than most."

"I'm braver than most?" Noctis asked, injecting false confidence into his voice. "Nah, I'm just stupider than most. Bravery and stupidity go hand in hand, after all."

Fenrir, the newest member of the Grimm Troupe, chuckled. The sound sent chills down Noctis's spine. "You know, I'm supposed to be beheading you right now. I wouldn't be so cocky if I were you."

"Why not? You know what happens if I die here, correct?"

"Of course. You wake up in your bed and this whole thing would seem like a distant dream. Still, that can wait."

"Seriously?" Noctis asked. "Just get on with it, please."

Fenrir chuckled again. "Don't worry, I won't keep you waiting. Still, I'd like you to hear me out."

"What?"

"I'd like to talk," Fenrir said, an edge of frustration entering his voice. "We don't have long, though."

"Talk about what?"

Fenrir's wolf-headed helm bared its teeth, and Noctis got the impression that it was trying to smile. "How to save the world, for one."

Noctis began to listen. Or rather, he would have if he hadn't been jolted awake by the door of his hotel room being blown off its hinges.

"Oh, I nearly forgot, say hello to Lapis for me!" He heard Fenrir's voice jovially yell.

What?

/-/

Icarus rolled out of his bed, ears still ringing from the explosion that had blown open their hotel room's door while shaking off the grogginess that came with deep sleep. The muffled sound of gunshots from outside cleared his mind soon enough, however.

"Gun!" He hollered, unable to find his glaive in the dust and smoke that had filled the room. "I need a gun!"

Someone slapped a familiar-looking gun in his hands, and Noctis's voice said, "It's a MP5. Right mag has hollow-points, left mag has AP rounds. Thirty rounds each, fire selector's set to three-round burst. You know the rest.

"Roger," Icarus replied, pulling out the telescoping stock of what he belatedly realised was Noctis's SMG before advancing through the ominously open door. Then, he stopped. Eyes widening in horror, he lowered the gun as he took in the nightmarish surroundings that he had found himself in.

When Lapis and Carmine were nowhere to be found inside the room, he had assumed that they, being their team's two close combat specialists, had gone outside to take point. He had of course expected quite a bit of bloodshed, about par for two young women with superhuman strength and massive bladed instruments of death being pushed into a corner by whoever had been stupid enough to breach the door of their hotel room in the middle of the night.

He hadn't been expecting something straight out of the set of a horror movie. Numerous carcasses dressed in voluminous black and yellow robes littered the damaged corridor, and around them laid a bewildering variety of weapons - for example, one of them seemed to be armed only with a mundane dirk and revolver, while the other gripped a pump-action shotgun with dead hands. At the end of the corridor, presumably where said corridor met the outer walls of the Continental, there was a gaping hole that exposed the hotel's interior to the outside elements.

"What's the hold up-" Noctis began behind him, walking out of the room behind him before pausing at the sight of the corridor. "Fucking hell!"

"Just what I was going to say," Icarus muttered darkly, shifting away from a rather large splatter of gore in order to avoid staining his trousers. What? Blood stains were absolute hell to wash out.

Upon closer inspection, the robes that the corpses were wearing seemed to be made of silk.

"Icarus, check your corpse," Noctis suddenly said, securing the belt of his greatcoat with his right hand while his left was occupied with his suppressed pistol. "The left armpit. Do you see anything?"

He moved closer, checking the corpse's left armpit. Sure enough, there was a tattoo - a series of Mistralian characters that he had unfortunately never learned to read - in said armpit. "Yep. What does it say?"

"It just means 'Bloated Woman'," Noctis explained. "Remember the cult that Ozpin told us about, the 'Order of the _Bloated Woman_? That's a dead ringer for these guys being cultists if I've ever seen one."

"I know they're cultists, but…" Icarus paused, pulling on his tweed waistcoat and buttoning it up. "They didn't deserve this."

Indeed, they had definitely not been granted a quick death. Most of the dead cultists scattering the corridor outside their hotel room were mutilated or messily dispatched in one way or another - Icarus was currently inspecting someone who had clearly died from his head being cracked like an egg against a concrete wall, while the one that Noctis was standing over seemed to have been messily bisected at the waist.

"A-Are those teeth marks?" Icarus tremulously asked, pointing at a corpse at the far end of the corridor that had been disemboweled.

Noctis audibly sucked in a breath through his teeth. "Yep," he said, his voice carrying an obvious wince with it.

"Are there Grimm here that we haven't noticed?" Icarus asked incredulously.

"No. Whatever this is, I think _we_ did this," Noctis replied grimly.

Icarus paused. He had fought Grimm a few times, mostly out of necessity since his quarry was usually the most dangerous game of all - his fellow man. They actually didn't bother eating their kills, instead focusing on killing their prey as quickly as possible. However, whatever had done this had actually _consumed_ the cultist's innards.

"Catch!" Noctis suddenly yelled, causing Icarus to spin around and snatch what turned out to be his own glaive out of the air. His jump boots and wrist-mounted scroll interface, along with his hooded ghillie cloak, followed soon after. "Now toss my SMG here!"

Icarus complied, passing his leader's weapon back to its owner. "Thanks," he said, flipping the bladed polearm into a familiar defensive stance. "Where to now?"

"To find whoever bailed us out," Noctis replied, his pistol withdrawing back into his arm to accommodate his main weapon. "If the cultists hadn't been killed outside then we'd all have been in deep-"

A scream cut Noctis off before he could specify what they'd be deep in. One of the cultists they'd both thought dead had just woken from unconsciousness and decided that censorship was the spice of life. Or maybe death.

"Icarus, move!" Noctis yelled, surging past him with his own weapon pointed directly at the cultist's head.

"Weapons down! The guy's harmless," he yelled back, gesturing for Noctis to lower his submachine gun.

Noctis sighed in frustrated relief, looking like he had only just realised exactly how harmless their formerly armed assailant was. "You know, when you say 'harmless' you could just take off the 'h' and still mean the same thing."

The dying cultist at their feet had indeed lost both his arms, the injuries on what remained of his shoulders implying amputation with some kind of blade. The amount of blood that had pooled around him meant that he was probably running only on adrenaline and whatever drugs were in his system at this point, so he wouldn't be of use for much longer.

"Ahh, ahh, please…" the cultist moaned. "Help us…"

"What's going on?" Noctis asked, pushing the muzzle of his submachine gun into the robed boy's face. His finger was at least off the trigger, Icarus could give him that. "Tell us!"

"Ah…" the cultist continued groaning. "An unsightly beast... a great terror looms!"

"Give us a straight answer, or we're all screwed!" Icarus yelled, more out of nerves than anything else, before pointing the tip of his glaive's blade at the dying kid's throat. In the state that he was in, dispatching him painlessly would be a kindness. "Now, tell us what did this to you. Alright?"

"Ahh!" The cultist suddenly screamed, scrambling back towards the wall as if he were trying to meld with it. "Bardiel is coming! The Fallen Soldier of God! Have mercy! Have mercy upon us!"

"Very well. I shall end your pain," Noctis said solemnly. He fired a single shot into the boy's head, blowing out his brains onto the blood-streaked wall he was resting on. Then he sighed, his mouth drawing a grim line over an expression that positively emanated tiredness.

"It had to be done, boss," Icarus said, strapping on his jump boots and wrist-mounted scroll. The tweed waistcoat followed soon after. "The kid was already dying; all you did was end his suffering."

"I know… it's just that I'm tired of all this," he muttered. "Have you ever heard about the saying about the straw that broke the camel's back?"

"Yep. I've had an education, you know?"

Noctis chuckled ruefully. "Yeah, I figured. So you get what I mean, correct?"

"I know," Icarus said, before sighing himself. He threw on his ghillie cloak, looking at his leader with an inscrutable expression on his face. "I was wondering where you'd reach this point, to be honest."

"What point?"

"The point where you think you've seen enough bloodshed to last you a lifetime. I can say for myself that I've been there; I left the White Fang precisely because I had reached that point and couldn't get past it."

"Then how do I get past it?" Noctis asked innocently.

Icarus startled in response, turning to his leader and staring at him with an intensity that was usually reserved only for looking through his rifle's scope. "You _don't_!"

"Huh?" Noctis replied eloquently.

"You _don't_ get past that point. Once you lose that restraint, that _reluctance_ to fight and to kill, you lose what's rooting you to humanity," Icarus said vehemently. "Once that line is crossed you become a monster, no better than a Grimm. Trust me, I've seen enough monsters to recognise them for what they are."

Adam Taurus. Sienna Khan. Countless others on both sides of the war; those who had willingly worked under Mantle's regime were often more than deserving of the death squads that hunted them down, while the executions that captured White Fang extremists received elicited no pity from him.

"I see," Noctis replied evenly, strolling towards the gaping hole in the wall. He stood on the very edge of the floor, looking down a height of twenty storeys before glancing back to his teammate. "You're not really cut out for close combat, correct? Then my advice would be to stick to high ground and cover us from there."

"Got it," Icarus said, watching as Noctis's clone disintegrated in front of him to become ash that was blown into his face. Only, upon close examination, it actually wasn't ash. Inspecting the detritus that had collected on his helmet, he found a mixture of dust, debris, and… fragments of bone.

Human bone.

Icarus's eyes widened. He hurriedly brushed the rest of the residue off of himself, reacting with disgust and horror as he shook the rest of the bits of _human_ _bone_ off of his own body. "Noctis? What was _that_?" He yelled into the comms. "I just got pelted with bits of bone from your clone!"

There was no reply other than static.

"Hello? Do you read me?" He asked again, this time lowering his voice to normal levels.

Still nothing.

Icarus, transforming his glaive into its sniper rifle form, decided to fall back upon his experience as Daedalus. A lack of response to comms meant that _something_ , at least, was going on. Something bad, probably.

Running up to the edge of the corridor, he leapt out of the building with a perfect swan dive. When the vectored-thrust engines of his jump boots flared into life, and when he took to the air in search of a suitable vantage point to use as a sniper nest, he couldn't help but stare at the scene below him.

What in God's very name had happened to Lapis?

/-/

 **Through the folly of He with a Thousand Masks, I come.**

What was once Lazuli, Lapis's quasi-schizophrenic voice and the AI of Lapis's armour, was now gone. Now the armour knew its identity, what it was and how it fit into the grand scheme of things. The pilot was _irrelevant_.

And yet... she resisted, imposing her not insignificant will upon Bardiel to stop it from carrying out its mission. However, with their wills in competition with each other, an angel's determination would naturally triumph over any human's paltry resistance. Her efforts were futile, and yet Bardiel felt a twinge of emotion. Pity? Admiration? Respect? It couldn't tell.

It didn't matter, anyways. It had successfully subjugated her mind, utilising most of her considerable mental faculties to control its own body while using the remainder to imprison the mind of this shell's previous owner.

 **Though my feet shall drag upon this base Remnant on my blessed quest, I have come.**

And on this blessed quest, someone other than its pilot was obstructing it with remarkable vigour. There was a fratricidal knight dueling it, with its blessed blade clashing against the zweihander - a pale mockery of its own majestic arm - of its opponent. However, it seemed to have the advantage when it came to power - every hit it delivered very nearly crushed the guard of its opponent, and right now it was easily on the offensive. The knight seemed to have been caught unawares by this whole situation, owing to the fact that she wasn't wearing her armour.

"Lapis!" The knight hollered. "Stop! You have to stop this now!"

Lapis? It was _Bardiel_. Lapis was nothing, just a weak little girl out of her depth and encased in a shell forged by God himself.

 **I am the Fallen Soldier,**

 **The forgotten one, the forsaken one.**

And yet God had forgotten it, left it for dead when the usefulness of its form ran out. It had been reduced to a _parasite_ , promising temporary power to its hosts but instead using their bodies as unwilling vehicles of its will.

The host wanted strength? It had more than enough to provide. Companionship? It was demeaning to communicate as the little men did, but it was doable. Knowledge? It had a wealth of it, just waiting to be imparted on the foolish. The price was a pittance in comparison; one's free will.

Bardiel had agency of its own, after all. Everything with a working mind had one.

 **The one who dons the flesh of his enemy.**

"Lapis!" The knight… Carmine… shouted again. "Are you in that thing?"

"Y-Yes…" a hidden speaker on Bardiel's body stuttered. "I-I am…"

All angels were merciful by design, and Bardiel was no exception. Therefore, it had granted its pilot a method of communicating with the outside world - a paltry method, but a method nonetheless. A small mercy, since the pilot otherwise shared the bodily sensations of itself, but still some mercy was contained within the gesture. They were designed to be merciful, after all, but the _degree_ of mercy given was not specified.

"H-help…" Lapis continued. "I-I can't control my own body… I-I can't stop this..."

"A prisoner in your own body, then?" Carmine asked, her voice tight. "Very well. So I shall disable your body to save your mind?"

"P-Probably…"

 **He shall witness my use of his weapons,**

 **And he shall know fear,**

 **And he shall know humility as I strike him down with his own blades.**

Bardiel charged forwards, swinging from the right to bring one end of its massive blade - shaped like a double-bladed greatsword in the manner of two broadsword stuck together end to end by their pommels, if said weapon had been organically fashioned out of a single piece of bluish-green alien metal - down onto the knight's shoulder. The knight dodged, rolling to her left and subsequently regaining her footing. Then, grasping the middle of her blade to lend greater power and accuracy, she lunged forwards to run Bardiel through. She struck true, the sword plunging into the seam between two plates of its skin and into its chest, but the blade missed the only vital part the angel had - its core.

"Lapis?" Carmine said tremulously, her facial expression carrying equal measures of uncertainty and shock. Perhaps she hadn't meant to do… whatever it was that she did. "P-Please…" she stammered, drawing out her blade from Bardiel's stiffened yet still standing body. "Tell me that I did not hurt you…"

"C-Carmine, move!" Lapis shouted urgently, her voice still distorted by Bardiel's armour. She was too late, however, and Bardiel span with lightning speed to backhand Carmine across the hotel courtyard.

The Argus Continental, unusually for the region, was a curved colonial-style building - unlike the Oriental-style buildings that made up the majority of the buildings in the Mistralian city of Argus, that ran around a central courtyard. This courtyard held a traffic roundabout that served as the vehicular method of access to the hotel's grand entrance, and in the centre of that roundabout was the statue of one of Mistral's war heroes from the Great War.

Carmine was flung into the foot of the statue's pedestal, slamming into the solid marble with bone-breaking force. A multitude of wet snaps resounded through the night as numerous bones, including most of her back ribs and multiple vertebra, shattered from the impact.

 **I am the Humiliated Son of God,**

 **The one He never meant to sire.**

Large, fully retractable mechanical wings with an extended tail piece unfolded from Bardiel's shoulders. It extended its AT-Field - its _Absolute Territory_ \- with concentric orange octagons of light forming in the air as it reduced the perceived mass of its body and reversed the direction of gravity within said territory.

An AT-Field could be best described as the next step in evolution from the primitive auras that most combat-capable humans which called themselves Huntsmen had. Unlike an aura, in which one's soul provides a passive layer of bodily protection along with specific abilities known as semblances, an AT-Field was the absolute dominion in which the owner's soul had total and _absolute_ control - hence the name - over the area within said field. This control extended to things as fundamental as velocity, acceleration, and weight.

It took flight, levitating upwards and into the sky to cast a shadow over the entire scene by hovering in front of the moon.

"C-Carmine… I-I am so sorry…" Lapis's voice said helplessly. Bardiel's double-edged blade seemed to twist on a molecular level, the metal contorting in a double-helix to form a two-pronged lance. A monomolecular edge gleamed unnaturally brightly in the moonlight. It was the false Lance of Longinus - the fake of a weapon that never really existed. Does the duplicate of a mere idea remain a duplicate, or does it deserve to bear the name of the idea that it manifests? No matter. It was a question for another day.

It aimed at its adversary below, shattered and slumped against the foot of a statue that was worth more than the knight's traitorous existence, but still alive. It would rectify that.

 **Angel of the Haze.**

 **I am Bardiel.**

Carmine, far below, spat out a mouthful of blood. She chuckled weakly. "Do your worst. I highly doubt that the damage would last, though."

The angel flipped the spear in its right hand, pulling back its arm in preparation to throw it.

 **I have come.**

Then a heavy projectile tore into Bardiel's wing - a high-explosive incendiary 20mm cannon round, Lapis's mind idly noted - and shredded the delicate structure. It reoriented its AT-Field back into a shield, cutting off the gravity reversal and causing it to plummet to the marble floor below. The spear, which it had thrown just when the cannon shell hit, went off target to embed itself deeply into the pedestal just next to the right side of Carmine's head.

A length of heavy-duty braided metal wire, periodically studded with razor-sharp blades, wrapped itself around Bardiel's ankle. It tugged on its leg with a sudden jerk, causing the angel to spin in mid air and exchange what was previously a graceful landing on its feet with a literally back-breaking crash.

"Nice shot, Daedalus!' A familiar voice hollered with false cheer. "Hopefully we weren't too late. What did we miss, Ishmael?"

"Oh, nothing much," Carmine rasped from her place at the statue's pedestal. "We only got ambushed by a cult in the Continental - your supposed safest place in Argus. We should have just stayed in a damn motel."

"I expected that we were dealing with sane and rational cultists, not suicidal lunatics," Noctis retorted, yanking his whip-sword back to retract the entirety of his weapon from around the angel's leg. "Last I saw Charrington, he was clearing out cultists with a semi-auto shotgun. Who's the flying guy?"

"Lapis…" Carmine said. "Her armour, it has gone berserk."

"Doesn't look like her armour, to be honest, but…" Noctis dropped off. "Hold on. Did she wake up like this?"

"Yes… wait, Ahab, you don't mean-"

"Yharnam? No, it can't be… she'd have told us if she were sent there. But maybe hers operates along the same principles."

Bardiel stumbled to its feet, its central nervous system already knitting itself back together to heal its pulverised spinal cord. The spear tore itself out of the pedestal, unfurling in mid-air to return to its previous form of a massive blade, before returning to the raised hand of the gestalt. The elongated maw of the angel's whale-like head dripped with dark amber fluid that dribbled out through gaps in its grinning teeth, and an eyeless visage turned to point in the direction of the only genuine threat present - the Hunter.

"I think I've pissed it off…" Noctis said quietly, a fake smile distorting his features as he slowly backed away.

"You think?" A more distant voice, one that Lapis's mind designated as Icarus, said incredulously. "You pulled it out of the sky and broke its back, of course it wants to tear you a new asshole!"

"Less chatting, more covering me," the Hunter whispered into a microphone to the left of his mouth, before turning to Bardiel. "Hey, big guy, how's it going? Sorry about just now, hope I didn't hurt you too badly…"

Bardiel was not amused. It began walking slowly towards the Hunter, its longer legs and taller stature allowing it to take one forwards stride for every three that its adversary took backwards. It hefted its alien double-ended blade in one hand, the fact that it was cracking the marble flooring of the courtyard with each footfall testifying to the sheer power contained within its sleek frame.

"H-Heads up... the gaps between the p-plating," Lapis's voice stuttered.

Noctis froze, staring at Bardiel with what looked like terror on his face. "Lapis… is that you?"

"W-What do you t-think?" Her voice, dreadfully metallic and racked with involuntary stuttering, replied with an undeniable undertone of smugness.

"Is that actually Lapis?" Icarus asked tremulously. "No, no, that can't be her."

"It is," Carmine snapped. "She is not in control though. I repeat, whatever we are fighting has essentially hijacked the body and soul of our teammate."

"Fucking monster," Icarus snarled. "How the hell do we free her, then?"

"Daedalus, take the shot," Noctis said hurriedly, slowly backing away from the advancing figure. "Left leg, knee joint."

A smaller projectile travelling at supersonic speed slammed into Bardiel's left knee, not quite managing to slip through the plates protecting it and instead glancing harmlessly off of the armour that was covering the joint.

"No visible effects," Icarus said again, frustration in his voice. "Not even a scratch on the plating."

"Fire again," Noctis ordered, slamming his whip-sword tip first into the ground to lock the individual blades back together to form one homogenous sword blade. "Same target, but the right leg this time."

The same projectile came flying at its leg again, Bardiel not bothering to raise its AT-Field under the assumption that it would hit its armoured skin. The assumption proved unjustified, however, when the projectile hit a seam in its knee plating and punched through the black inner membrane covering the angel's body where the plates didn't. The projectile slammed into the bone of the kneecap, shattering it, before corkscrewing into a tumbling trajectory that further destroyed the joint before messily exiting at the other side of the knee. Bardiel stumbled, snarling in agony as its good leg scrambled to keep its form standing.

"At least we now know it bleeds and can feel pain," Icarus's voice, muffled by the fact that Bardiel's body was hearing him via the comms bead in Noctis's ear, said triumphantly. "And therefore we now know that it can die."

"Would you mind explaining that particular logical leap?" Carmine asked, a smile on her face from some unknown emotion. Relief? Perhaps. She gingerly clambered back up to her feet while using the statue's pedestal to support her body weight, her body seemingly having healed enough to stand.

"If it bleeds, it has blood and therefore it is a living mortal creature. Pain indicates that it has a reason to avoid physical damage, which wouldn't be the case if it was immortal. Therefore, if it lives, it can die."

"That makes sense," Carmine replied, relief permeating her tone. "So we can in fact kill it." She finally managed to stand on her own two feet, but that changed when she turned the blade of her zweihander and suddenly ran herself through with it. The length of the silver blade erupted out of her back, writhing flesh growing out of the exit wound with disturbing speed and wrapping around the blade like a cancerous tumour.

They wish to smite a child of God? An illegitimate child, never intended to bear the name of its Father, but an angel nonetheless? Heretics and blasphemers, all of them. Bardiel took stock of the situation - the knight was essentially incapacitated and the problem the sniper posed could be rectified easily enough by extending an AT-Field barrier in said sniper's direction, which meant that only the Hunter would have to be dealt with via direct confrontation. A somewhat daunting prospect, but certainly doable.

It roared, sending spittle flecked with dark amber fluid flying, before raising its blade with two hands in front of it and charging.

"Carmine!" Noctis shouted, entering a proper combat stance for the first time that night. "Did you injure it in any way before we arrived? What can you tell us about it?"

"I stabbed it in the chest, but it did not die," Carmine replied evenly, tearing the defiled blade out of her body and then entering a combat stance on her own - grasping the hilt with both hands, as the tumorous growth The flesh parted at a multitude of places on the sword, allowing bloodshot eyes to bulge out and stare at Bardiel's holy form. "No, it would be more precise to say that the injury had no effect on it. As far as I can tell, most if not all wounds of such nature will prove ineffective at best."

It turned out that the knight was not in fact incapacitated, and was actually capable of continuing the fight further. The remnants of Lapis's consciousness within its glorious body started to emanate smugness, most likely in a primitive attempt to gloat, but Bardiel's superior mind crushed it.

"Ah well," Noctis muttered, preparing himself to dodge the first few attacks. "You can't have everything in life."

Bardiel swung its blade in an upwards diagonal stroke to the Hunter's left side, but a quick hop in the backwards direction - otherwise known as quickstepping - allowed him to evade. The follow-up of a horizontal swipe to the right was evaded once again, while a lunging thrust with the left-most blade was countered by the Hunter leaping up and planting his foot onto Bardiel's weapon before slamming the still in-progress attack into the ground.

Its opponents seemed to prioritise defensive manoeuvres instead of outright aggression, which was unusual since Hunters mostly tended towards the latter, but that change turned out to be detrimental. Bardiel leapt back from the failed attack, adjusting its footing before swinging the right-hand blade of its weapon downwards. This particular strike was parried into the ground with apparent ease by Noctis's cane-sword, and the Hunter retaliated by slipping a large leaf-shaped blade through another seam in its plating to stab it in the ribs.

Bardiel suddenly froze, a horrible feeling running down its spine as the blade grazed its core. It turned towards the Hunter with its eyeless face, staring him down as its lips slid shut to form a single straight line.

"What's wrong?" Noctis asked viciously, twisting the blade inside Bardiel and causing it to jerk in response. "Didn't like that?"

"W-Watch out!" Lapis's voice yelled.

Bardiel growled, a deep and truly alien sound, as its left hand shot out to grasp entirely around Noctis's head. It tightened its grip, seeking to crush the Hunter's skull as it had done for the robe-wearing madmen earlier, but suddenly couldn't when the knight's tumour-covered blade came down again and again onto its outstretched forearm and caused its arm to go limp. Dark amber liquid dropped from the seams surrounding the crushed armour, the pulverised flesh underneath weeping the fluid that linked Bardiel's core - and therefore its soul - to the rest of its body.

It must have been a surreal scene for onlookers, Bardiel mused. Watching a five metre tall union of blessed flesh and holy armour fight against two sword-wielding teenagers which were still in their pyjamas… what a sight it must be. Surreal? Maybe. Majestic? Awe-inspiring? Definitely.

Noctis charged in again, taking a lunging thrust at Bardiel's form that it easily dodged. It swung at him in response with a reverse-grip slash, only able to hold its weapon with one hand since the other was mutilated, but it managed to catch him in the stomach. The Hunter was sent flying, his aura shimmering before flickering into nothing as he slowly but surely rolled to a stop.

"Shit," Icarus's voice blurted out, clearly panicked. "Carmine, cover the boss! His aura just went down!"

"I thought his aura was at full capacity?" Carmine replied, bringing her sword down at Bardiel's head. Bardiel blocked the strike with the left-hand blade.

"Exactly! That hit took it down from full capacity to zero!"

"Motherfucker," Noctis wheezed, pulling himself back up to his feet. "That thing hits harder than Yang on a bad hair day."

"This is no time to joke around," Carmine said imperiously. "The next strike _will_ actually hurt or kill you if it connects."

"Nothing new, then." Noctis replied, returning to his combat stance. "People die if they are killed, after all."

"Just… be careful, alright?" Carmine asked, something unidentifiable entering her tone. Worry? Care? Something else entirely? "I for one do not want to see you injured or killed."

The part of Lapis within Bardiel found this behaviour rather romantic and sweet, but the greater part of Bardiel only responded with puzzlement and annoyance.

It brought its left-hand blade up and slammed it down onto Carmine's guard, the force of the two swords colliding managing to push the knight back, before bringing its right-hand blade diagonally upwards under her guard. The knight dodged, but that left her open to a low sweep that took off her left leg.

Carmine collapsed to the ground, landing on her much-abused back. Bardiel raised its blade to finish her off, and was about to bring it down before it found itself interrupted by a burst of pistol-calibre rounds penetrating the seam between the plating on its back.

"Now, now, don't get too antsy!" Noctis yelled, his submachine gun already at his shoulder and spitting lead. "Remember me?"

Lapis's intelligence managed to observe that the projectiles entering were not proportional to the 9mm Parabellum bullets that were expected, instead being smaller steel penetrators - consistent with the usage of his AP rounds. Bardiel, after less than a second's worth of self-analysing its worldly form, determined that it's skin was almost unmistakably similar to soft body armour - in other words, Kevlar.

"What the fuck are you doing? You don't even have any aura!" Icarus shouted through the comms. "Get the hell away from that thing!"

"Nah," Noctis replied blithely, his face filled with determination. "I'm not leaving a teammate out to dry."

"Are you insane?" Carmine snarled. "I _regenerate_ damage, while you on the other hand do not! This is not your fight!"

Bardiel's blade coiled into itself on a molecular level once again, twisting into the two-pronged lance that was its weapon's true form. Twin monomolecular blades once again reflected the moonlight with uncanny brightness, seemingly sprung fully formed from a shaft made of two pieces of coiled bluish-grey metal that was grasped in a single hand.

"That's right!" Noctis goaded, transforming his submachine gun back into his cane-sword and drawing it. "Come and get it!"

Bardiel lunged with a wordless howl of rage, thrusting its weapon but missing its target when the Hunter dodged. It drew back, spinning the weapon once over its head before going for a low sweep that was simply jumped over. A third thrust was countered in the same manner as its sword thrust earlier, namely by Noctis stomping said thrust into the ground.

It felt a series of projectiles bounce off of its armoured head, which was quickly explained by the accompanying muffled thumps and Noctis's panicked cursing. Bardiel caught a glimpse of a pistol with an attached suppressor before the weapon seemed to retract back into the left arm of its opponent.

"How heavily armoured is this thing?" Noctis exclaimed angrily, slashing with his sword at Bardiel's front but glancing off of the armour plating there. "Even its damned skin is like Kevlar!"

"You saw a .338 armour-piercing bullet literally bounce off of that armour," Icarus replied calmly, probably because he was safely up on a rooftop. "Let that sink in for a bit."

Bardiel retaliated, swinging its spear around in a low sweeping arc that Noctis only just avoided by jumping back. The Hunter took a running start, leaping into the air and catching Bardiel with an upwards diagonal slash that again glanced off of the armour before transforming his weapon in mid-air and swinging the resulting whip so that it coiled around its remaining functional arm. He landed with a roll, using said roll to pull at the whip and destabilise Bardiel.

"Checkmate," Noctis growled, his arm shifting to allow his large leaf-shaped blade - a smatchet, Lapis's imprisoned mind noted - before he teleported forwards and viciously jammed his blade in Bardiel's back. The blade slipped through another seam in the plating and hit the core, this time causing a hairline crack to appear.

"Y-Yes…" Lapis's voice stuttered once again. "T-The core, d-destroy it…"

Bardiel stabbed the point of its spear into the ground, lashing out with an empty right hand to grasp Noctis's head again. It wrapped around the Hunter's skull, using it as leverage to bodily slam its opponent to the ground even while his artificial arm flailed and repeatedly slammed its blade into Bardiel's core to cause additional damage. His sword on the other hand could do nothing now, not without the leverage it required to do actual damage.

It mentally deactivated the aperture from which it's host spoke, causing her voice to die out with a pained gasp. It couldn't play around anymore, not when it had sustained direct core damage. It had to end this.

Lips slid away to reveal jagged teeth once again, and an armoured hand slowly wrenched the skull to the side to reveal the vulnerable carotid and jugular. As befitting of the animal that the Hunter was, it would die like an animal - devoured by an apex predator.

"No!" Carmine screamed.

A premonition of fear. Bardiel moved its head upwards, mouth closing to stem the dripping of saliva, and beheld the crystallisation of the most primordial kind of terror - the fear of the unknown.

Carmine had raised her flesh-infested sword into the air, and the tumour wrapped around the blade was practically glowing with crackling red arcane energy. Placing her left side forwards, she held her weapon aloft with both hands before bringing it back. She was somehow standing yet again, the stump from which her left leg had been cut off now replaced by a pulsating column of blood that more resembled a peg-leg than an actual human limb.

" _In the tombs of Pthumeru, mankind sought knowledge_."

Despite, or in spite of, the knight's own crippled body the sword burned ever brighter. Luminescent crimson light, like the colour of blood except infinitely brighter, should have been bright enough to hurt yet Bardiel couldn't avert its gaze. It found its own body betraying it, forcing it to stand up at its full height.

" _But the men exploring the Labyrinth found what they were never meant to find, learnt what they were never meant to know_."

For what could an angel do in the face of a divine order from God itself? Its Father might have abandoned it and left it to die, it might have had no reason to preserve any sort of loyalty to the Father, but it was still the Spawn of the Father. It's heritage, at least, could not be denied.

" _And so it was that what they discovered in Isz would doom them all. The blood of the old gods, far from the blessing they thought it was, would be their doom_."

" _The strength that mankind would beget from their heresy would be punished, taken from their very bodies by the blessed soldiers of God's own fiefdom. Cainhurst_."

There was a smell of burning flesh in the air, and Bardiel only now noticed that Carmine's flesh was crackling - as if it were literally being cooked by the sheer power she was holding up to the skies. Offshoots of the crackling arcane energy covering her blade arced down, torturous bolts of blood red electricity that bore all the hatred in the world, and tore into human flesh with all the current that they carried. Her face itself was a testament to human misery, her absolute agony writ upon her features… but yet the sword remained above her head. Yet her expression remained terrifyingly straightforward - her current state of existence was wrath and her entire intent was to kill.

" _And hark, they were birthed by the arch-traitor himself! Saint Sanguinius, patron saint of the Vilebloods, carrying with him the very same blood that would damn their prey! That blood, which would mark their quarry, gave them the divine mandate to be the predators of those who had dared overstep their boundaries_."

Something in Bardiel's holy form trembled, and it found its knees trembling to give out from under it. Up close, now, with nothing between the angel and its death, Bardiel could finally appreciate the deep irony of its situation.

God's very own words, crystallised into a blade bearing His very heraldry and power, would slay it.

" _Mankind would learn once again what it meant to fear the unknown. They had risen too far from their primitive roots, where early Man learned to harness fire to provide that precious circle of firelight beyond which nothingness lurked. They would be returned to their oldest, most primordial emotion: fear. And they would be returned to their oldest and strongest fear: the fear of the unknown_."

What else could it do against God's first, most base and instinctive decree - to fear what is not known - but to submit and lay down its unworthy life?

" _And they would learn true fear, in the face of Treachery_! _Of the everlasting treason, of the branding light of the Original Sin_!"

There was nothing else that Bardiel could do but die.

"To the last I grapple with thee; from the heart of hell I slash at thee; for the sake of hate I spit my last breath at thee…" Carmine snarled, her voice tightened with rage, stepping forwards with her right foot. "And the name of my infernal hatred is…"

Bardiel accepted its fate, and waited for the end.

"- **CLARENT BLOOD SANGUINIUS**!"

Carmine brought her sword down, and Bardiel was baptised in the majesty of God's sheer power.

A beam of blindingly bright red light, the very same arcane energy that had consumed the knight's blade, leapt forwards from the tip of the blade. The surge of crimson lightning consumed its body with supernatural vigour, melting armour and flesh alike while the force of the blast peeled even the residue off of its bones. In an instant, the beam had passed - leaving nothing behind save for scorched marble flooring and a single, bare yet still standing, skeleton.

Yet… on the sternum of that skeleton, a perfect yet damaged sphere of red crystal still glowed. Bardiel was, beyond even its own expectations, still alive.

"Daedalus, big red thing! Shoot it now!" Noctis yelled into his comms.

A projectile travelling at supersonic speeds - a mundane man-made weapon, not the divine blade of the knight - slammed into Bardiel's core, shattering it. A befitting death, it thought, for a wretched creature such as itself.

Bardiel's consciousness dwindled, receding back into the mind of its host. Flesh and armour regrew on the frame of the skeleton, yielding a perfectly regenerated angelic form for only a moment before the armour receded into an already shrinking body to form the still pristine and clothed form of one Lapis Ferrum.

Lapis stumbled to her feet, looking around at the devastated courtyard and staring blankly at the world.

"Lapis… you alright there?" Noctis asked cautiously, sheathing his sword but transforming it into his submachine gun. "Do you remember anything?"

"Stay back," Icarus instructed sternly though the comms. "You should take a look at Carmine first. I'll come down and check on Lapis."

Her mind was oddly blank, as if there were gaps that had yet to be filled in. She could only watch passively as a cloaked human figure leaped off of the hotel's rooftop - achieving powered flight for a moment by rockets mounted on his lower legs - before quickly touching down in the middle of the former battlefield.

Carmine screamed from a short distance, drawing back from Noctis's inquisitive gloved hand as it brushed her shoulder. "I-it hurts! The burns!" She yelled. A more attentive investigation from afar allowed Lapis to realise that her teammate was currently suffering from second and third-degree burns that covered most of her bare skin.

Lapis stood stock still, trying to process whatever it was that had happened. All she remembered was the door being blown open, her and Carmine rushing out to defend their still not fully awake teammates, and-

 _Tearing open a man's gut with her teeth and devouring the flesh before feasting on his warm, soft innards._

 _The taste of iron-tinged pork on her tongue, and the gustatory delight of swallowing it._

Lapis collapsed to her knees, hunched over and began to vomit. The taste and flavour of _human meat_ still lingered on her tongue, in her mouth, and even in her gut, despite her body's best efforts to purge it. And yet, underneath the layers upon layers of disgust that heaped themselves upon her, there was a subconscious feeling that she had _enjoyed_ it.

"I… I ate people?" She asked quietly, suddenly feeling a familiar hand pat her back to help her along.

"Yes… you did," her partner replied somewhat hesitantly, his ghillie cloak suddenly seeming very soft and welcoming to her shocked mind. His expression was inscrutable. "There's no use keeping that from you, not when you don't clearly remember the whole thing."

She continued vomiting, even after any solid matter had long since been replaced by bile. Lapis retched one final time, then stopped. "W-what did I become?" She asked again.

"A monster… an angel, but twisted," Icarus replied. "Fallen, perhaps. Whatever took you over, it wasn't exactly benevolent."

"I wasn't taken over," Lapis suddenly snapped, before her expression morphed into one of deep unease. "N-not from outside, at least."

Indeed, no external entities had taken control of her body. The monster that had used her form like a puppet, that had imprisoned her within her own mind, that had used her own _soul_ as a weapon and as a shield… that was from something within her.

Lazuli… no, he was dead - replaced by Bardiel. The voice of her first friend had become the voice of an angel - God's messenger, enacting His will and desire upon the world.

 _And His will was to subjugate mankind, to return them to their rightful place. His desire was to make his puppets dance for His amusement, as well as some darker design that defied all comprehension._.

"From within, then," Icarus said evenly. "How about now? Are you feeling any foreign influence now?"

"No… not really," Lapis replied truthfully. "Whatever you did, you killed it."

" **I am** ," Lazuli's voice, familiar yet terrifyingly alien, said in her head. " **By license of he who is named the Moon Presence, I am I**."

Lapis froze, chills running down her spine. No, that wasn't Lazuli, that was-

" **I am Bardiel**."

No, no, no. She tried to mentally suppress the remaining fragment of the angel within herself, managing to silence and bind it, but yet it remained.

"Are you okay?" Icarus asked, tapping her shoulder.

Lapis started, subconsciously flinching backwards before looking back at Icarus's face. Apparently she had spaced out, which explained how sudden her partner's intrusion felt. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched as Noctis hefted Carmine's still gently smoking form onto his back. The two of them positively radiated awkwardness, which only increased when Carmine wrapped her arms around his neck to secure herself. The sight, despite her absolutely messed up mental and emotional state, still managed to bring a smile to her face.

"Alright, team," Noctis called out, his attempt to sound stern somewhat undermined by the fact that his injured partner was riding piggyback on his shoulders. "Let's get our stuff and move out, because I for one do _not_ want to have to explain to management why we trashed their courtyard. And the hotel, for that matter."

"Do you know where we can go?" Icarus asked.

"I… have a safe house, an apartment, near the docks," Noctis admitted hesitantly. "It's nowhere as nice as the Continental though, since the docks aren't exactly the nicest part of town. I haven't been there in literal years as well, and I've set it up to accommodate only two people, so it also needs some work."

"It'll be fine," Icarus replied. "What hardware do you have there?"

"Standard stuff. A workbench, a decent computer, and a locker for weapons and ammo."

"Then it'll work."

Carmine coughed, expelling a voluminous cloud of ash and soot from her probably charred respiratory system, her partner seemingly oblivious to the sudden dark cloud over his head, before saying something herself. "So we retrieve our belongings first, yes?"

"O-Obviously…" Lapis said weakly, watching the occasional flashes of light that occasionally brightened the hotel's windows - definitely muzzle flashes.

"We'll have to talk about the possession thing later, you know that?" Icarus asked her.

"Of… of course."

The four of them began walking towards the main entrance of the hotel, which had been secured by suit-wearing guards which Lapis recognised as the Continental's security officers some time ago, but then stopped when Noctis suddenly stopped himself.

"I nearly forgot… one more thing," he muttered.

"What?" Icarus snapped, though without any anger.

"Since the entire hotel is in chaos now, nobody's doing administration…"

"You're kidding me, right? This is literally the pinnacle of organised crime, and you want to _rob_ the _front desk_?"

Noctis sighed. "What I'm saying is that they aren't going to miss that slab of premium chocolate that's currently chilling in our minibar. We aren't stealing anything of value, so it's fine."

"What kind of chocolate is it?"

"Dark, eighty-eight percent cocoa."

"Then they shall not miss it," Carmine whispered from her place on Noctis's back.

"You… don't like dark chocolate?"

"Nay, I prefer milk chocolate. The additional creaminess from the milk better brings out the flavour of the cacao, in my opinion."

"Won't just using more cocoa in the chocolate achieve the same effect?" Her partner asked incredulously.

"My point still stands, though. Besides, the additional cocoa adds a bitterness that masks the flavour of the cocoa itself."

"It doesn't work that way but… fine," Noctis conceded, a look of puzzlement still on his face.

Lapis looked at the scene before her, and gently smiled. No matter what happens, in the near future or even further, there'd always be moments like this to live for.

/-/

At the peak of his church, standing at the bell tower from which the peals called worshippers and reminded them of the times for daily prayer, Father Tyrian Callows stared through a portal floating in front of his bell. In the distance, a colonial-style building had smoke billowing out of some of its windows.

"It is done, I presume," Tyrian said into the portal, hoping that the numerous tentacles holding the portal's rim open weren't damaging his rather expensive brass church bell. Not that he'd want to touch the portal's rim of eldritch blue-green energy, though.

" _Yes, my child, my High Priest_ ," the creature on the other side of the portal said. " _The boon that you had requested has been awarded_."

"And what shall be my price to pray?" Tyrian asked evenly.

The creature stared at him, two shimmering green eyes glimmering from among a large head - shaped like a horizontal clam but made of entirely soft flesh - before it seemed to deign to respond. " _My children move without my permission. You had wished for me to weaken their minds, and I have granted your wish. Their attack on the temporary dwelling of the Hunter was unsanctioned and unexpected, and it will put our good name at risk_."

"This is truly unfortunate, my goddess, but their loyalties are divided," Tyrian reasoned. It was a dangerous game, juggling the scrutiny of Ebrietas and the Troupe Master all while retaining his patronage of Salem, but it was work that only he could do. "Some among our hallowed order have sold themselves to the Moon Presence, and their loyalties now lie with him."

" _Then they shall be punished. They had decided to provoke the Hunter, and the Hunter shall rectify their recalcitrant behaviour. Permanently_."

He might go ahead and address his temporary employers as gods and goddesses, but his true goddess - the one with which he had staked his personal loyalty - was still Salem. That would never change.

"Excellent. I shall notify those who remain at our side to refrain from engagement."

" _You are a good man, Father Tyrian_ ," his temporary goddess said. " _You shall not betray me, not like everyone else_."

"Why did you want to hurt the Hunter in the first place?" Tyrian asked, ignoring Ebrietas's previous statement.

" _The Hunters took Rom from me. They took the life of my child, and thus I shall spill their cursed blood no matter who or what they add. They are empowered by blood and nothing more. Blood, I might add, that came from me_!"

"Revenge," Tyrian muttered. "Crude and primitive, but a strong emotion indeed."

" _Yes_ ," Ebrietas replied. " _The cosmos themselves shall take my grief, and with it I shall crush my adversary_."

"Very well. Your desire is my life."'

" _As it should be_."

The portal closed, leaving Tyrian alone to watch the Continental eventually stop burning. Ebrietas's meddling had woken Bardiel, a situation that he could have done without but an opportunity nonetheless. At least Bardiel was only one angel - the rest had either not been found yet or had died - and said angel was predictable. All that it did was kill indiscriminately, and that made it perfect for his own purposes - like a rabid attack dog that could be thrown into the fray whenever it was suitable.

The game had only gotten marginally more dangerous. Bardiel could only kill him. Ebrietas and Nyarlathotep could quite literally kill his ancestors all the way back to the start of time if they ever wanted to. Salem could just execute him, but the disgrace would kill him faster than the sentence itself.

Everything was still under control, Tyrian mused.

/-/

On the other side of the portal, things were not so peaceful.

There was what seemed to be a massive undersea cave, studded with glowing coral and growths of rock alike, and within said cave there was a monster. Ebrietas lurked within its chamber, its body made almost entirely out of pale white tentacles that weighed and coiled every so often with disturbing spontaneity. And within its chamber, it thought.

 _Trapped within a nightmare of its own making. Just like myself, but infinitely closer._

Its children had betrayed it, serving the Crawling Chaos and leaving their previous surrogate mother behind. She still craved surrogate children, as it was in her nature, but she just kept losing them.

And now her children would die. Good or bad, young or old, man or woman, they would die at the hands of Hunters.

 _Mother Kos looks on with empathy, or something like it at least._

Her discovery at the hands of the scholars of Byrgenwerth at Isz had been one of the happiest days of her life; she finally had an outlet with which to commune with the outside world. In her excitement, she had taught mankind how to gain strength from imbibing her blood - a gift from the Gods, nothing more.

At least, that was before they had decided to take that gift and run. They had captured her, imprisoning her within their Grand Cathedral, and used her as a living blood bank. They slaughtered her true surrogate child - Rom. As such, with the help of the Moon Presence itself, Ebrietas made her blood into the poison that would eventually fell Yharnam - the beast plague. Divine punishment, made flesh when the city crumbled under the weight of its own sin.

 _They deserved it, for desecrating the Fishing Hamlet and mine own children._

In the chaos and after it, her children had returned to her. The Order of the Bloated Woman was founded by some deep-sea divers that found the remains of Isz, in which she still yet lived, and it had become a massive movement that spanned the entire region. They were her pride and joy.

And now they would die, meaninglessly slain by Hunters yet again.

 _There is one last chance to save them. Are thou willing to commit?_

It was only then, in the solace of her undersea cavern, did Ebrietas, daughter of the cosmos, weep for her lost children - both those which had already been lost and those who were doomed to follow.

 _Unfortunate. Creating your own nightmare would have been so easy for you, if not for your soft heart._

The whispers of Ebrietas's long-dead kin didn't help matters at all. It prostrated itself before the long since fossilised corpse of its child, Rom, the Vacuous Spider, and began to mourn.

 **(Things are often not what they seem to be at first glance, like this. Oh, and Lapis now looks** **like a Mass Production Evangelion - fake Lance and all. There will be far-reaching repercussions of that... Hopefully future updates will be more consistent in terms of timing - definitely not in terms of quantity though; there's a reason that this took two months to make.)**


	26. Joy Luck Clubbing

**(I have a beta now! Please, ladies and gentlemen, welcome bryanlimhongzhi into the fold! He's been a real help in polishing many, many bits of this fic, so he's as much of an integral part of this insane trip as I am.)**

The Continental had been in what somebody would have called the 'good' part of town. Clean and well-policed, the downtown district had proven to be rather safe and clean - at least, before cultists had invaded the hotel. From what Icarus was seeing out of the window of the taxi they were in, that was not the case for the harbourfront district.

Maybe it was because the driver had wound down the driver-side window to freely indulge in a cigarette, and, even though he could speak decent enough English, had been endowed with such a thick Mistralian accent that Noctis had given up and decided to converse with him in Mistralian anyways?

Maybe it was because the high-rise buildings he had become used to in Vale and in downtown Argus had gradually been replaced with an alternation of the grimy apartment blocks, the trademark of underfunded government housing, and run-down shophouses?

The colour of the world outside seemed to have bled away as they had left downtown, even though the tropical sun was shining overhead and the sky was a harsh blue.

"What's the deal with this place?" Icarus muttered, staring out of his window. Lapis, Carmine and himself were cramped into the back of the taxi - luckily, Lapis was quite a petite girl outside her armour and Carmine had a slight build herself - while Noctis was situated in the front passenger seat. "It's like two different cities, but they're connected by a few roads."

"Argus is made up of three different parts; the International Settlement, the Valean concession and the Old City," Noctis replied from the front. Normally, Icarus would have begrudged him for having so much space to himself while his teammates were packed together like sardines in the back, but this arrangement was out of necessity - Noctis was the only person present who could speak and understand Mistralian.

"Could you give me a general rundown on what these places are?" Icarus asked, trying his best to reduce his movement as much as possible since Lapis had decided to fall asleep on his shoulder a while ago. The tweed, as well as being totally fashionable, also seemed to make him a rather appealing ad-hoc pillow. Still, he couldn't complain.

"Of course. The Continental was in the International Settlement, which also happens to form the core of Argus's business and trade relations. The Valean concession is the most affluent yet bohemian part of the city, and the majority of the people staying there are rich Valean expats. The Old City, where we are going now, is both the largest part of the city and where most of Argus's locals stay."

"What forces would we expect in each part of the city?" Carmine suddenly asked, having been mostly silent for the majority of the trip. Surprisingly, her burns had yet to recover completely; the cauterised and flash-burned regions seemed to recover much more slowly than usual, although she would probably be fully healed within the day.

"The Atlesian military detachment in the city holds total jurisdiction over the International Settlement to secure Atlas's economic interests there, while the local police enforces the law in the Valean concession and in the Old City. They mostly do their job in the former, but for the Old City… let's just say that it's a bit on the lively side."

Icarus sighed. "Let me guess, you went deep enough to find out exactly how _lively_ it got."

"Pretty much, yeah."

"What did you do? Did you do part-time wet work?"

"Kind of, but not really at the same time…" Noctis dropped off, gesturing subtly at the taxi driver. "Could we talk later?"

Icarus took the hint. "Alright then," he said, staring out of the window.

Now and then there were entire gaps in the buildings, the fragments of bone still embedded in the ground evident of Ariadne shelling, and those gaps were filled with shanty towns made of plywood and corrugated metal. He got occasional flashes of eye contact with the denizens of those shanty towns, his own war-torn gaze meeting with the dead eyes of those beaten into submission by poverty and squalor.

"It's not really as bad as it seems on the outside, you know?" Noctis asked rhetorically, his gaze following Icarus's to glimpse the slums they were passing. "Argus really is quite a nice city. It's just that the Troupe passed by a few years ago, sometime before I arrived here. They're still reeling from the destruction that those bastards left behind."

"That explains the fragments. They're clear evidence of Ariadne bombardment."

"They are," Noctis said simply, letting the conversation lull into nothing yet again.

The taxi twisted and turned through roads that slowly saw a decrease in the number of cars in favour of hordes of motorcycles, along with the roads themselves becoming more crowded, before finally slowing down in front of a somewhat better looking apartment block - it had glass doors, for one.

"This looks… surprisingly decent," Carmine noted, elbowing Lapis in the ribs to jolt the other girl awake.

"Wha…?" Lapis sleepily muttered, glancing around with bleary eyes. "This place doesn't look like much."

Noctis had gotten out already, waving off the admittedly shifty-looking taxi driver and seemingly determined to wrangle with their team's luggage by himself. Luckily, his cybernetic arm seemed more than adequate to tackle the task by itself. Passing around the bags to their respective owners and closing the taxi's doors one last time before it drove off to parts unknown, he opened the glass doors and slipped inside before holding said doors open for his teammates to follow.

The hallway smelled of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply the upper half of a man, more than a metre wide; the face of a man of about forty, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features coupled with prominent musculature and the uniform of a high-ranking military officer - maybe a general or something. The forefinger of the right hand was pointed at the viewer with an outstretched arm, and the poster was one of those where the eyes were so contrived that they follow one wherever they go. There was a caption beneath the man's depiction, but it was in Mistralian.

"What does this one say?" Icarus asked, pointing a finger at the poster.

"Join the Mistralian armed forces. That's basically the gist of it, if you ignore the rest of the nationalist rhetoric plastered all over the thing."

"Ah, I see."

"I'd just ignore the posters if I were you," Noctis called out to the rest, walking towards the staircase that loomed in front of them. "They were put up during the Faunus Rights Revolution, and therefore some of them probably haven't aged well. Most of them are propaganda posters anyways, so you aren't missing out on much."

"Why don't we try the lift?" Lapis asked, her voice still sounding tired.

"Even at the best of times it seldom works, and whoever's in charge of repairing the place seems to have died in a ditch somewhere," Noctis replied. "It's better to stick with the stairs, in my opinion."

"Stairs? Seriously?" Carmine said under her breath, the resignation in her voice still as clear as crystal.

The flat was seven flights up, which would have been a challenge for anybody who wasn't a Huntsman. Even then, the trip had turned out to be quite an exhausting one.

"Here we are," Noctis said, with something remarkably close to apprehension in his voice, before he unlocked the door.

The first thing Icarus noticed was the lack of a shoe rack, or anything suitable for that purpose besides a conveniently built shelf next to the door. The second thing was how _empty_ the house was; nothing was set upon the counters or on the table in the kitchen. There was a bookshelf against a wall, near the couch, but there was nothing upon said bookshelf. There were no pictures in sight, while the air held competing scents of dust and furniture polish.

Icarus felt his stomach sink into a shallow pool of uneasiness. This wasn't someone's home, not even a temporary one… it was a dollhouse. Just an arrangement of furniture pretending to be a living space.

Noctis caught his teammate's stare, while undoing the belt that secured his greatcoat to his waist before hanging the garment on a thankfully present coat rack, and his face shifted into a vaguely guilty expression. "It… probably needs a bit of work. I haven't been here in years, and when I left I went ahead to clear everything out since I thought that I wasn't ever returning..."

Icarus turned to Noctis, who was currently dressed in the uniform that went under his greatcoat. It was in his signature terrifying shade of black, save for a right upper sleeve that was an ivory white - one that seemed almost blindingly bright in comparison to the rest of the garment. The top was surprisingly not tucked in, which contrasted with a pair of black trousers that were tucked into a set of equally black steel-toed combat boots.

Icarus took off his ghillie cloak, hanging the green voluminous garment up next to the greatcoat. He then debated taking off his tweed waistcoat and hanging it up as well, but reasoned that it - along with the tweed trousers and white formal shirt - was comfortable enough to wear indoors for extended periods of time.

"Are you sure that the four of us can truly fit inside here?" Carmine asked.

"Yep. The bed here can fit two people, while the couch over there can be converted into a couch-bed that can fit two more. We'll have to talk about bedmates though…" Noctis trailed off, taking off his gloves before meticulously placing them on the bare table. His hat came off next, and it was placed just next to the gloves.

"The arrangement should be simple," Carmine said confidently. "You and I shall claim the bed for ourselves, while Lapis and Icarus shall take the couch-bed."

Noctis flushed a deep red at that, his face taking on a blush that almost caused Icarus to burst out into sniggering right there and then, before he seemed to return from his previously flustered state. "W-well… okay, if you insist…"

"Looks like he's finally getting it, eh?" Lapis asked quietly, the question more directed at herself than to anybody in particular. "I still can't believe _he_ called Jaune oblivious. The pot really does call the kettle black."

"I'm fine with taking the couch-bed, just in case y'all were wondering," Icarus said, breaking the rather concerning tension that had overtaken the room. This was… honestly not that bad. It reminded him of the old days when Blake and Adam ended up in a locked room together - without the subsequent traumatising sound effects, of course.

One could argue that the two were precisely the kind of people whom should have never met, especially since both of them had turned out to be truly _kinky_ bastards.

"I'm okay as well," Lapis said, moving over to the sofa - an expensive-looking leather one - and sitting down. "At least you have good taste in furniture, boss."

"I pride myself on being a man of culture," Noctis said.

Icarus moved over to the kitchen and opened the fridge there, revealing that it contained nothing but cold air. The adjacent cupboards that he subsequently checked, instead of containing the obligatory dried foodstuffs, were also equally empty. "We'll have to go out and buy some supplies," he noted.

"At least water and electricity is still being supplied," Carmine replied from the living room.

Icarus moved over to the sink and opened the tap, allowing water to flow out and therefore proving Carmine's statement. Reasoning that the fridge was probably being supplied by the aforementioned electricity, he shut the tap back off and moved to rejoin his team.

It appeared that his team was already making themselves at home. The bookshelf was currently being enthusiastically stocked with familiar yet foreign names - Austen, Tolstoy, Balzac, Dostoyevsky - and others that he didn't recognise, but it seemed that most of the books were being supplied by Carmine. Lapis meanwhile was already making herself comfortable on the couch, slouching back and clearly already asleep, while Noctis sat next to her while playing a game on his scroll.

A cursory inspection revealed it to be some sort of warplane flight simulator, and Icarus watched as Noctis's virtual plane - a slender propeller-driven plane with elliptical wings - outturned an opponent and subsequently tore it apart with wing-mounted guns. His plane then suddenly exploded in mid-air, prompting his leader to swear under his breath as the scene on his scroll's screen suddenly cut to a still firing anti-aircraft gun. He quit the game and moodily stomped to the bookshelf, simultaneously choosing a random book with a nondescript black cover while shoving his scroll back into his pocket.

"Are there any spare mugs in the kitchen?" Icarus asked. Carmine, seemingly finished with her work and oblivious to Noctis having taken a book for himself, walked to the bathroom and shut the door. The sounds of showering soon followed.

"Yep. Luckily for us I apparently had four of them, so one for each of us. Just take care not to break them," Noctis said casually in reply. He settled back into the sofa, taking a sip from the gently steaming mug of tea that was on the coffee table, before cracking the book open with relish.

"Alright, boss," Icarus said. He walked over to the kitchen again, fishing out a sachet of coffee from the hoard that Noctis had amassed after raiding their former room's minibar, and soon enough he returned with a mug full of caffeinated elixir of life.

"You wanna grab a book? We're gonna be here for a while," Noctis asked offhandedly, waving his free hand at the recently stocked bookshelf.

"Sure," Icarus replied, scanning the texts presented to him while trying to find something vaguely familiar. He grabbed one of them at random - Pride and Prejudice, the cover proudly proclaimed - and started at the first page. He plopped himself down next to his leader, fishing out his reading glasses from an inner pocket of his waistcoat before putting them on, and began to read.

A few minutes passed, with Icarus making it through the first few chapters before he was suddenly interrupted by a small squeak from Noctis.

"What's wrong?" Icarus asked, turning towards his leader. That same vibrant blush had returned to Noctis's face, colouring his cheeks a deep red. With the bulging eyes that accompanied it, his expression made Icarus wonder what exactly was in that book that he held.

"N-nothing…" Noctis stammered, averting his eyes from Icarus's own gaze. "It's just… Well, this is unexpected…"

"What's unexpected?"

"Well… I didn't expect Carmine to be a fan of this sort of stuff, that's all…" Noctis continued awkwardly, finally resuming an uneasy eye contact with Icarus. "I mean, this is definitely a yaoi novel, but I didn't expect it to be so… blatant… about the subject matter."

The bathroom door opened, revealing Carmine wearing a surprisingly dressed-down t-shirt and shorts. She came out still drying her hair off with a towel, the relaxed smile on her face silently proclaiming that life was good. That smile froze when her eyes registered the book in Noctis's hands, and then it slid off of her face when she saw Noctis's expression of awkward embarrassment.

The heir to Cainhurst's throne leapt at their leader a second later, red-faced and screaming like a banshee.

/-/

Lapis snorted through a mouthful of noodles, quickly swallowing her food before bursting out into laughter.

"What is so funny?" Carmine snapped, turning her head towards the laughing girl.

"Of all the people I'd had guessed was a _fujoshi_ , you were never among them," Lapis said, still trembling slightly with amusement.

Carmine turned to Noctis, who seemed to shrink down into his own chair. "What is a _fujoshi_?"

Noctis sighed in resignation. "Fine… um… a _fujoshi_ is a female fan of boys' love, also known as yaoi…"

Lapis chuckled. "Heh. I had that phase once, but that was years ago. Wouldn't have imagined that you like that stuff, though, especially since you're… you know, _you_."

Carmine clutched the black book to her chest, her face going red once again. "Could we perhaps cease discussing my personal tastes in literature?"

Icarus just rolled his eyes and continued eating his noodles. To his credit, they were pretty good noodles - thick rice noodles served with a liberal serving of fish slices, all in a delightful soup composed mainly of fish bone stock save for the addition of a small cup of rice wine. Somehow the rice wine just elevated the taste of the broth to an entirely new level, which in turn elevated the entire dish.

Noctis sighed again, bringing his gaze up to stare Lapis down in a reasonable impression of the thousand-yard stare usually associated with war veterans. "Yes, indeed. Could we perhaps change the subject? Anything but _this_ , please."

Lapis huffed in mock anger. "Alright, fine. Do you have anything to bring up?"

"First, Carmine. Could you perhaps _not_ put your… 'private' literature on a shared bookshelf?" Noctis asked, pinching the bridge of his nose. Carmine turned to him, her expression full of betrayal. "Be like Blake and put them somewhere where only you'll find them."

"Wait…" Icarus piped up. "Blake-"

"She has a stash of… questionable books. Don't ask me how I found them."

"When did you find them?"

"Remember when that whole clusterfuck with the supposed White Fang mole happened? I decided to snoop around a bit in team RWBY's room, and found her repository while I was at it."

Lapis was now the one to stare at Noctis, her face becoming as unimpressed as a face could possibly be. "You snuck into the dorm room of four teenage girls? Seriously?"

"To be fair, they weren't actually present in their dorm. And it's investigating, not sneaking around."

"Fine, I'll take your word for it. You're mature enough to to not do anything stupid, at least."

"Talking about investigating…" Noctis began, standing up from the table. The owner of this particular restaurant had recognised Noctis's face and had granted them the usage of a parlour room for their own purposes. Now, he was closing the doors of said parlour. After sliding them shut, he took out a card of some sort from his pocket before sliding it on the table. "Here. I found this on what looked like a high-ranking cultist."

It was a rigid card made of expensive paper, coloured a dark red bordering on maroon along with gold leaf highlights. One side, in gold leaf lettering that was set in both English and Mistralian lettering, read as 'The Crouching Tiger Club', while the other bore the club's address as well as leaving white spaces for the member's particulars and date if joining. Noctis had apparently managed to blank out the presumably dead cultist's personal particulars by pasting strips of white paper over the spaces left for said particulars, which should stand up to anything barring abnormally intense scrutiny.

"It seems like some of them frequent this club, which happens to be in the old city as well. I found two or three more cards on others that died at the Continental, but this one was the only one in usable condition."

"So you want to investigate this club?" Carmine asked, her face becoming serious once again. "Perhaps it will give us some more leads, especially if the cult truly frequents there."

"Exactly, but what do we do?" Icarus added, finishing his own bowl of noodles with a loud slurp. "There must be some immediate objective, after all."

"Alright, then," Noctis replied, leaning on his end of the circular table and resting his weight on his prosthetic arm. "Here's what we're gonna do. Carmine and I will infiltrate the club ourselves, attempt to steal the membership register, and basically try to gather as much intelligence as possible. Icarus, you will provide overwatch. Basically you'll spot incoming threats for us in real-time, and if necessary you'll be taking a few shots at whatever or whomever needs to be eliminated."

"Then what do I do?" Lapis suddenly asked.

Noctis shrugged. "The same thing as last time, I guess. You provide heavy support if it's needed, especially since you're by far the most physically powerful out of all of us. Since you apparently can fly now, you could also help us follow people if we need to."

"So I basically circle around and above everything until you need me to swoop down on something?"

"Correct," Icarus replied. "If you feel yourself slipping again, don't hesitate to tell us and pull out before things get serious."

"I cannot overemphasise how important that is, Lapis. We are definitely _not_ in a shape where we can fight and defeat your armour again if it goes berserk, especially since we're going to be splitting up."

"Are you sure that you can do this?" Carmine asked. "If your abilities are unstable, it would be advisable for you to sit out on this one."

"I know, it's just that…" Lapis broke off suddenly, her breaths suddenly heaving for a moment before they normalised. She sniffled, rubbing at her eyes with a hand before visibly steeling herself. "I just need _something_ to do! I'm not a cripple, for fuck's sake!"

Her last words came out in a strangled shout, accompanied by the chattering of crockery as she slammed her hands into the round table. The other three stared at her, all stunned by the outburst.

"I'm not incapable of combat, I'm not a casualty, I'm not a liability for you three to shunt around!"

"We didn't say you were a liability," Noctis said carefully. "Are… are you okay?"

Lapis rested her head in her hands for a moment, her posture hunched over and defeated while she trembled from emotion, before looking at her teammates. Tears were streaming down her face, to the surprise of the other three.

"No. No, I'm not," she said quietly. She raised her left hand, the sigils on the back of said hand glowing a bright red. Her aura flared in response, but, instead of the usual shimmering field that used one's soul as a shield, her hand was covered in the white armour that had nearly killed everyone present only the night before.

"Mother of God, no…" Noctis muttered, his voice distressed. Icarus for his part only stared in shock.

"What exactly is wrong?" Carmine asked, turning to her leader in worried confusion.

"Remember what I told you about aura coming from the soul?" Noctis replied uneasily. " _That_ was Lapis switching her aura on."

"Wait. So you mean…"

"Whatever took her over last night… it changed her _soul_ , warped it into _this_ …"

Lapis forced out a sardonic chuckle, before continuing. "I don't even have my own semblance anymore. Look, just look," she said, before extending her hand to the side. The field of concentric orange octagons burst into life once again. "My soul. It touched my fucking soul."

"Lapis, I don't know what to say…" Icarus said, looking at his partner with concern in his eyes. "But… will whatever happened last night happen again?"

"I wasn't possessed, not in the way that something from outside took me over," Lapis explained agitatedly. "It came from within."

"Lazuli?" Carmine asked.

"He's gone. Lazuli wasn't Lazuli at all, but _Bardiel_."

"Bardiel? Who's that?" Icarus prodded further.

"The _thing_ that was in the pilot's seat last night," Lapis replied. "It felt so alien yet so familiar, like it was a part of myself that I didn't know about before. But to think that it changed my soul, who I _am_ …"

Noctis grimaced, pushing himself off of the table before sitting back down into his seat. "This happened in a dream, correct?"

"Well… yeah."

"Remember when I went berserk as well, and when Carmine opened my locker everything turned out to be different?" Noctis asked, gesturing at his own uniform. "I still hate this outfit, by the way. Bloody thing still chafes like hell since I haven't managed to break it in yet, and I've been getting weird looks in the streets as well-"

"Get to the point, boss," Icarus growled, glaring at his leader.

"Okay, got it. My point is, this might be the same sort of phenomena that induced my own set of changes. My one question to you is this; did the transformation happen after a dream?"

Lapis suddenly jerked upwards, appearing to pay much more attention to Noctis than before. "Huh? What do you mean?"

"Did… you know, _Bardiel_ , happen after waking up from some fucked up nightmare?"

"Well, yeah…"

"Perhaps they're related then. Did anything in particular stand out to you?"

"I...I saw you!" Lapis suddenly exclaimed, pointing an index finger at Noctis. "Your old outfit, the one with the skull mask! _He_ was wearing it?"

"Him? Wait, you saw him as well?"

"The Troupe Master?"

"No, some kind of monster wearing my body!"

"That's exactly what I mean!"

"People, cool it!" Icarus yelled. Noctis and Lapis both jumped slightly in response, before seemingly simultaneously realising that they had both stood up and pointed fingers in their excitement. "Would you mind enlightening us on what the hell you both mean?"

"We both had the same entity in our dreams that tried to mindfuck us," Lapis replied. "It's dream stuff, you won't understand."

Icarus sighed. "Fine. Get on with it then, but for God's sake, _restrain yourselves_. You aren't children."

"Alright, daddy," Noctis replied offhandedly, before blushing. "Damn book's scarred me for life…" he muttered under his breath.

"Back on topic, then?" Lapis asked, beginning to sound like she regretted starting this conversation in the first place.

"Yeah, yeah. So the faker on your end turned into the Troupe Master?"

"Yep. Yours?"

"Turned into a giant tentacle monster. And no, it did _not_ in fact try to sodomize me with tentacles."

"Shame. I would have preferred something like that, especially compared to what _I_ got."

"Too much info, people!" Icarus blurted out, frantically waving a hand between the two teammates to intervene once again. "Yes, I know that we're in Mistral, home to the most questionable kinds of media on the face of Remnant, but remember that there's such a thing as _too much info_!"

Noctis sighed again, slapping one hand over his face but not really managing to mask his abashed expression. "Stupid yaoi book…" he muttered darkly.

"So… any more common ground?" Lapis asked awkwardly.

"Well, this isn't exactly common ground per se, but… um... Fenrir says hi?"

"What."

There wasn't even any emotion in Lapis's reply, instead just being a flat exclamation that somehow still managed to get her meaning across.

"Yeah… he kind of knows who you are?"

"Fenrir, as in the one from the Grimm Troupe? You know, the crazy wolf-man-Grimm creature with the giant sword of 'fuck everything'?"

"Yep, that's the one."

Lapis threw up her hands in frustration. "I don't even understand this anymore! You know, this just gets more and more confusing the more I think about it…"

"Yeah, I get you."

Carmine exhaled heavily, getting up from her own seat to slap Noctis on the back of the head. "We have _entirely_ lost the original focus of this conversation, which was to _infiltrate a social club_. Save the dream talk for _after_ we work out the logistics, yes?"

"Alright-" Noctis began, before Lapis interrupted him.

"I'll be sitting out for this one, boss," she said unhappily.

"Why?"

"I've thought it over, and… I can't be one hundred percent sure that I'll remain in control if I bring out the armour. The risk just isn't worth it, especially since we're working in a heavily populated area."

"Are you sure about this? I mean, _really_ sure about this?"

"Yeah, I am."

I mean, it's your decision, so I'll take your word for it," Noctis declared, before turning back to the rest. "Icarus, all you'll need is your usual combat equipment. I'll probably stick with my uniform, but Carmine…"

"Yes?"

"Do you have any formal attire? This is a gentlemen's club we're infiltrating, so we'll need to dress up."

"Oh," Carmine replied simply, without betraying any trace of emotion.

She walked over to Noctis, grabbed his left arm and began to effortlessly drag him towards the currently closed door of the parlour dining room. The servos in Noctis's prosthetic arm gave out distressed-sounding squeals as they strained from the sudden decompression, marching Noctis's own exclamation of surprise.

"Wait, where are we going?" Noctis protested, trying to regain his footing and resist the pull but failing miserably.

"We are going shopping, dear leader," Carmine said evenly, the obvious smirk on her features a grim omen towards Noctis's financial health. "Did you not say yourself that it was necessary?"

"You didn't bring anything along?"

"Not at all, dear leader, but that means that you get to buy something for me."

"A-Are you going to drag me into the fitting room again…?"

"Maybe."

"Can you not? You know I don't have a fashion sense worth mentioning, and besides, it makes me uncomfortable for a number of reasons…" Noctis trailed off, his face turning red once again.

Carmine rolled her eyes. "Very well then. You still have to go with me, though, because _you_ happen to be the one paying."

"Slow down, dammit, my wallet is in my coat!"

Carmine yanked Noctis's greatcoat off of the nearby coatrack, almost flinging aside his own hooded ghillie cloak in her haste, before tossing over the leather garment and allowing the somewhat miffed young man to wear his greatcoat. Then, she continuing to pull him along for the ride.

"We'll meet up at my place later! Probably five or six in the evening, give or take a bit, but definitely not before that!" Noctis called out over his shoulder, already receding from the immediate view of his two remaining teammates. "For God's sake, can you slow down a bit?"

Icarus heard the clattering of footsteps down the staircase that separated the parlours from the main restaurant downstairs, at least before even that eventually faded away. He got up from his own chair, contrasted by Lapis sitting down, and walked over to a window.

"They're adorable together, aren't they?" Lapis asked cheerfully.

"Yeah, they are," Icarus replied, looking out of said window - one that happened to overlook most of the surrounding area by virtue of the restaurant they were eating at being situated on top of a hill.

The view outside was interesting, to say the least. Over the busy streets below was a veritable spider web of electrical wires; the Old City seemed to lack the underground electricity grid that the richer parts of Argus had, instead relying on an older above-ground system to supply energy to the population.

The lack of colour comparative to downtown, which Icarus had noticed from the taxi, had proven to be more than made up by the cultural vibrancy of the city itself. One could hardly turn a corner in the Old City without coming across some kind of music or art, from the street buskers that played music or performed acts of sleight-of-hand to those selling art pieces and handicrafts from little shops.

"This place kind of reminds me of Vacuo, in a way, but it's more peaceful," Lapis interjected, jarring Icarus out of his contemplative fugue. "Reminds me of when I used to survive by selling art myself. It's difficult, to be sure, and luckily my work for the Legion usually proved enough to pay for most of the things that I needed."

"You sold art?" Icarus asked, looking at his partner in surprise.

"I might not look the part but, yeah, I can put some paint on canvas. Made a decent amount of lien doing it as well, but most of that went towards the bills."

"At least you have some kind of talent. I sold cabbages, and you can probably imagine how that business venture went."

"I mean, you must have learned from trial and error along the way," Lapis said, shrugging as she did. "We all do."

"That's true," Icarus replied.

Lapis got up from her own seat and pushed in the chair before moving to leave, but then she paused. There was a nondescript black book on the table, the hardcover book lacking any perceivable identifying features save for some dog-eared pages. She picked up the book, looking at it in her hands with equal amounts of confusion and curiosity in her eyes.

"Huh, Carmine left this behind," Lapis noted innocently. "I should probably keep this safe for her."

Icarus turned toward his partner, registering the book and recognising it for what it was, before he blanched. "Are you sure you want to look at it? I mean, it's Carmine's book…"

"I'm sure a little peek won't be a problem…" Lapis said smoothly.

"No, I mean… the content might not be appropriate for someone of your age…"

"Hey, I might be small but I'm as old as all of you. I can deal with a little smut."

In Icarus's defence, he was indeed two years older than his teammates, but he found it appropriate to not bring the fact up at this exact moment. He winced as Lapis flipped the book open to one of the dog-eared pages, and he could only watch in growing horror as Lapis's expression morphed from surprise into dawning realisation and then into one of clear interest in the subject matter at hand.

"Huh, she dog-eared all of the steamy bits…" Lapis noted softly, more to herself than to her teammate. "I can't fault her for that, that's actually pretty efficient…"

"Lapis?" Icarus asked cautiously, unsure as to what he was in for. Was it going to be yet another instance of his partner rambling about her love life for what felt like hours, or something even worse?

Lapis sniggered to herself, her gaze becoming unfocused as she began to reminisce. "Ah, this brings back memories. I still remember how he reacted when I first tried this on him… oh, his face when it first went in-"

Yep, it was worse. Icarus immediately started his attempt to block out the words that threatened to tear his comparative innocence into pieces, at least without plugging his ears with his fingers and singing to himself like a child. He simultaneously offered his condolences to one Solis Aurum, reflecting on the numerous sacrifices the poor kid must have made in service of the world at large.

"I didn't know that he'd react like that if I hit that particular spot-"

Right now, Icarus's only worldly desire was for a pair of earplugs. Alas, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

/-/

The Crouching Tiger Club turned out to be situated in a slight overlap between the Old City and the Valean concession, an area where rich locals and foreigners rubbed shoulders very frequently indeed. The frequent intermingling of Oriental and Caucasian features that Noctis observed for himself confirmed his first impressions, but honestly it didn't matter - the cultists from the other night had been a relatively even mix of all races.

Luckily for him, though, it also happened to be very near to Argus's main shopping street. Carmine's shopping spree a few hours ago had given him the opportunity to scout out the area, at least when he wasn't being held hostage in a fitting room and forced to give his partner fashion advice. Luckily for the purposes of their current operation, her burns from the previous night's battle had fully healed by the time they had decided to embark to their current venue.

"Anything wrong?" Carmine suddenly asked from beside him. They had ended up deciding on a nice maroon dress that - in Noctis's opinion, at least - matched the colour of her eyes. Carmine had agreed suspiciously readily to that advice, but anyways here they were. He was short of a decent sum of lien, and his partner had a wonderful new outfit.

"I was just thinking… since we can't actually make it for the dance at Beacon, why not we have our own one here?" Noctis asked quietly. "I mean, we might as well have some fun while we're here, after all."

Carmine regarded him silently, causing him to feel as if his heart had stopped for a moment, before designing to reply. "I see your point," she said. "Maybe we shall."

Dinner had also been a relatively short and simple yet sweet affair, with Noctis using the limited ingredients he managed to buy from a nearby wet market to cook something homemade. It wasn't anything fancy; just a spread that included stir-fried spinach with garlic as well as an omelette made with preserved radish, along with braised chicken in soy sauce and bowls of rice for everyone.

What? He was proud of his cooking, that's all.

"How do we bring in our weapons?" Carmine asked. "The common practise, if I understand correctly, is to leave them outside with the reception."

Noctis shrugged. "We smuggle them in, of course. You still have your boot knife, correct?"

"Yes, I do have it."

"Excellent. And your claymore?"

"We shall leave it at the front desk; if a fight breaks out, the chaos should give me the opportunity to obtain it."

"Even better. And as for me…" Noctis trailed off, removing his sheathed cane-sword from his side. He twisted a section of the weapon, and clamps locked the sword in its sheath before the sheath itself extended to cover the seam between the two parts. Now, the cane-sword was indistinguishable from any other normal walking cane. "Aha! This should work."

Carmine stared at him, her expression utterly disapproving. "Is that not _the_ most cliche method of hiding weapons?"

"Yes, but I have this," Noctis replied, using his flesh hand to emphasise his metal one.

"The loss of an arm does not cause a sufficient loss in mobility to necessitate the usage of a walking cane."

"The injury is psychosomatic, or so I say."

Carmine pinched the bridge of her nose, before sighing. "I shall not argue with that reasoning, and I dare say that it should deceive most people."

"That's the point."

Currently, they were situated outside a tea-house - said tea house was literally down the road from the club itself. Surprisingly, Carmine had gone for the house brew - an extremely strong black _pu'er_ tea - while Noctis had decided to go for the more demure option of jasmine tea. Between them sat a piece of half-eaten steamed yellow sponge cake that laid idly on a ceramic plate that also had two forks resting on it.

Indeed, the whole situation would have appeared normal if not for the sheathed zweihander leaning on the wall next to them. The numerous sixty-round drum magazines on the side also tended to distract from the relaxing atmosphere.

"We have one more thing to discuss, though," Carmine said, taking a sip of her tea.

"What's that?"

"Our cover story," she said, gouging out a chunk of cake with her own fork and placing it in her mouth. "To avoid too much scrutiny, you see?"

"Right…" Noctis mused, taking up his own fork to carve out a hunk of the spongy dessert for himself. He pushed the cake into his own mouth, noting that the steamed cake was very soft, sweet and chewy, as befitting a regional specialty, before swallowing and continuing to speak. "Any ideas?"

"We could enter as a couple."

Noctis stared blankly at his partner for a while, remaining so still that one could have mistaken him for a wax figure, before reacting with almost disproportionate excitement.

"What?"

"Shh… not so loud!"

"You could have told me _before_ we left the shops!"

"Wait, why?"

"So that I could have bought you a ring!"

Now it was Carmine's turn to stare dumbfounded at her partner, red eyes boring their way into Noctis's very being with unidentifiable emotion, before her hand reached over to flick Noctis in the forehead.

"Ow!" Noctis exclaimed, flinching back more from surprise than from the negligible pain of the impact. "What was that for?"

Carmine sniggered. "For being a romantic idiot," she replied, the smirk on her face hardly distracting from her reddening face.

"I mean, it was just for the cover story…"

"I know," his partner replied, rolling her eyes. She looked like she didn't believe him, which was… worrying. "But really, do you have a better idea?"

"I was thinking that I'd be your bodyguard?"

"That will not work," Carmine stated simply. "They would recognise you immediately. Your work as Pyrrha's aide was public, correct?"

"Yes, it was."

"I see. So shall we use my idea, then?"

"I don't have the ring though…" Noctis said guiltily.

"The ring is optional. I recall hearing a term thrown around in Beacon… we could be… boyfriend and girlfriend?"

Noctis gagged on his cake, prompting Carmine to get up from her chair before walking around to pat him on the back until he cleared his windpipe.

"Are you serious?" Noctis asked, his tone rife with conflicted hope .

"If it is any consolation, we only need to hold up this facade for as long as we need to infiltrate the club."

"I know, it's just that…" Noctis trailed off, before seemingly mustering his own confidence and continuing. "Maybe this isn't a facade at all?"

"What do you mean?"

"It's the same thing, with us being a couple and all, but… instead of giving it up after the operation, we continue indefinitely?"

The silence that immediately followed his question made the cake on the table distinctly less appealing, and Noctis was about to stammer out an apology when Carmine grabbed his shoulder, pulled him to his feet with sheer strength, and pinned him to the wall with both her hands on his respective shoulders. For all intents and purposes, he was effectively immobilised unless he decided to teleport away - an unwise move for a multitude of reasons, one of which being the sword leaning on the wall that could very well be transformed into a LMG.

"Carmine?" Noctis asked uneasily. Carmine's eyes now held that same unidentifiable emotion as before, and honestly the close proximity was becoming somewhat uncomfortable - it was getting warmer, especially under his uniform, for some reason. "Are you okay?"

"So… we can stay as a couple _forever_?" Carmine asked apprehensively, her face somehow reddening even more.

"Um… i-if you want…" Noctis stammered, still too caught unawares by the entire situation to do anything more than acquiesce. The sheer improbability of the scenario only became more evident when Carmine began to giggle like a schoolgirl. Probably out of nervousness, but still.

The buzzing of Noctis's scroll in the pocket of his greatcoat, and the accompanying gentle chime of his chosen ringtone, only served to startle the two of them even more than they would have otherwise. Carmine stopped pinning him to the wall and jumped back in surprise, her expression becoming one of sheepish abashment. Noctis sighed, noting that the call was from Icarus before he brought the device to his right ear.

"What is it, Daedalus?" Noctis snapped, surprising even himself by the sheer ferocity in his tone. He certainly wasn't very happy about getting interrupted, in any case.

"Sorry, Ahab… I know that this is a bad time to call, but the club is about to open."

Noctis checked the clocktower on the nearby church, and it was indeed 6pm. The Crouching Tiger Club's opening hours were from 6pm to 1am every night of the week, according to the details on their purloined member's card, and their current plan was to stay inside for as long as possible to gather information.

"I understand. Do you happen to have a clear line of sight on the club's interior?"

"Look up at a sixty degree angle, about three o' clock from where you're currently facing."

Noctis glanced up in the stated direction, and sure enough there was a faint glimmer of light - one he knew full well was reflected off of a single lens. He also caught a faint glimpse of what most people would assume was shrubbery, but Noctis knew that it was just the hood of Icarus's ghillie cloak. The light came from the rooftop of an antiques shop directly across the road from the club itself, which was where Icarus had evidently set up his sniper nest.

"Alright, I see you. You were saying?"

"I think it's time for you and Carmine to go in, boss. Remember that Lapis won't be providing air support today," Icarus said. "Honestly? I'm still somewhat doubtful about whether or not she'll be okay with this in the long run, though, especially if things go to shit today…"

"Her sitting out today was her own judgement call, and you know it," Noctis said, his voice taking on a hard edge. "In all fairness, she's the one who's in the best position to judge whether she's operationally ready or not. If she says that it'll be too dangerous for her to take part in this, then that's final."

Icarus sighed. "It's just that… we have to include her somehow, you know? It would be more damaging to her psyche if we were to force her to continue to sit out than if she plays her part sooner rather than later, if you ask me," he said unhappily.

"I know, but the risks involved are slightly too high to risk her getting possessed again. You _know_ how close we cut it last time."

"I'm just speaking from the perspective of somebody who's been her partner and friend for months now when I say that she's very much a doer, not a thinker."

"I just have concerns that it may happen again, and now would be a _horrible_ time for that."

"She knows that, boss. Lapis might be impulsive as hell, but she's got a good head on her shoulders."

"Let's hope that she'll be able to get back into the field, Daedalus," Noctis muttered. "Continue your overwatch, and be prepared to notify us if anything happens on the outside."

"Understood," Icarus replied. "Should we activate comms first just in case?"

"No, we'll synchronise the beads after we get into the club proper. I don't want the reception to see them by accident."

"I see. Well, I'll wait for you two to get yourselves in then. Over and out."

"Roger," Noctis said, shutting off the call and stowing his scroll back into his pocket. He glanced in Carmine's previous direction, being slightly surprised when he realised that she had moved, and sighed in amused exasperation when he saw that she was back in her seat.

"Yes?" Carmine asked through a mouthful of steamed cake, her attempt to keep a straight face somewhat undermined by the fact that she was currently devouring the rest of the cake. She moved to wash it down with the remainder of her tea before swallowing.

"You do know that I wanted to eat that cake as well, yes?" Noctis asked evenly, his own attempt to keep a straight face being doomed from the outset by the sniggers that threatened to break his calm facade.

"I indeed do," Carmine responded. "Shall we get going, then? I would suggest that you finish the rest of your tea first, though."

Noctis sat back down to stare into his own cup of tea, beginning to ponder about what could possibly happen inside the Crouching Tiger Club. He'd had a similar experience in Junior's Club back in Vale, albeit marred by his first, very painful, meeting with Yang. Who could he meet here and now in Argus, his old stomping grounds?

"Have I missed out the possibility of tea as a visual art form?" Carmine asked semi-irritably. "I would have thought that one is meant to drink tea, not to stare at it as if the secrets of the world are engraved on its surface, but I could be wrong."

Noctis shrugged internally, finishing off the rest of his jasmine tea before placing the now empty cup back on the table. Safe in the knowledge that they had already paid for their refreshments, he got up and smoothed over his coat. Carmine rose soon after, adjusting her dress to allow for it to fall over her comfortably before moving over to retrieve her weapons.

"Ah well," Noctis mused under his breath. "I've had some tea, all's well with the world."

/-/

The Crouching Tiger Club, rather conscientiously, was sealed off from the outside world by a stout iron door. Carmine watched as Noctis rapped on the door with the knuckles of his prosthetic hand, and in response a viewing slot almost silently slid open.

"Do you have membership?" The doorman within asked, the only feature of them that was visible through the slit being their eyes.

"I happen to have a card, thank you very much," Noctis replied, taking out his stolen membership card before pushing it through a slot in the door.

The viewing slit slid shut for a moment, and the sound of muttering could be barely heard through the door before it suddenly stopped. The slit slid open once more.

"Everything appears to be in order, sir. But… may I assume that your companion is your plus one?"

"She is," Noctis replied evenly, but not without an ever so slight moment of hesitation. Thankfully, the doorman didn't seem to notice.

"Hmmmm… well, just come in first," the doorman said. The loud clack of a latch being opened echoed throughout the immediate area, and, accompanied by a tiny grunt of exertion from the doorman, the door to the club opened.

Carmine's immediate impression was that of Oriental opulence, with expensive wood panelling in place of the more ubiquitous and cheaper options of paint or wallpaper. A number of large gleaming mirrors were strategically placed around the space to make the room seem larger than it actually was, both serving to make the club feel more open and to make the patrons feel less cramped.

The doorman turned out to be a young girl about their age, seemingly of Mistralian descent like her leader while dressed tastefully in a red and gold cheongsam. She seemed to be somewhat terrified of Noctis's uniform - apparently she hadn't really gotten a good look at it through the door's viewing slit - and glanced pleadingly at Carmine as if she was beseeching her for help.

"My partner does not bite," Carmine said soothingly. Noctis glanced at the girl's fearful expression, before turning to Carmine in confusion that slowly turned into dismayed realisation. He sighed.

"I know the uniform looks a bit intimidating, but I didn't actually have time to get something civilian and formal," Noctis said, gesturing at himself. "I hope you understand, and I'm sorry if I scared you."

"No, no, it's okay," the girl said quickly. "It's fine. I totally understand…"

Noctis sighed once more, taking off his peaked cap and cradling it in one arm before watching as the porter retreated back behind the reception desk.

The girl took a deep breath, as if calming herself, before continuing, "Now, as I was saying, membership. Club policy necessitates that each patron of ours is a member; we don't allow for plus ones, unfortunately."

"I see… what shall we do, then?" Noctis asked, placing his cap back on his head before grasping the outer lip of the desk with both hands and leaning on said desk. As far as Carmine could tell, this rather concerning mannerism was done subconsciously.

"Ummm… you could always pay for membership…" the girl said uncertainly, seemingly becoming more frightened by her partner.

Carmine, deciding to intervene before her leader accidentally made the poor doorman wet herself, put her hand on his shoulder. "You are scaring her," she whispered in his ear.

Noctis glanced at her, before checking his own body language and stepping back with a sheepish grin on his face. The doorman turned to her with relief plain on her features, and Carmine flashed a quick apologetic smile in response.

The girl sighed herself, appearing to regain her confidence once more. "Okay then, now that's… out of the way… membership. Right, membership. Your plus one's membership will cost…" she dropped off, that look of fright returning to her, before continuing in a much more apprehensive tone. "Two hundred and fifty lien."

"Two hundred and fifty lien?" Noctis asked, his voice going deadly quiet. Carmine not so gently punched him in the arm, causing him to look apologetic once again. That sheepish grin returned, and his right hand moved to rub the back of his neck.

"The membership price will be fine," Carmine said decisively, subtly grabbing Noctis's collar in a grip tight with frustration. Noctis, acquiescing, took out his wallet and handed over the required figure. The girl, thankfully, couldn't resist a quick snort of amusement at her idiot partner's expense.

Soon, there was another membership card - this one was going to be legitimate, at least - in the process of being created. A short pageboy cut of black hair gently bobbed as the doorman scribbled relevant details like the current date on the back of the card, before she stopped. The girl looked up again to ask, "May I know your names? It's so that I can put your details in the card and the membership register, of course."

"I am Ishmael, and he is Ahab. _Captain_ Ahab."

"Ah…" the girl replied. "A military man, then? That explains a lot…"

"Oh, did I scare you?" Noctis asked abashedly. The fact that Carmine still had his shoulder in a death grip seemed to help matters. "I'm so sorry about that…"

"No, it's fine. Now, before I allow you two to enter, could you leave your weapons at the front desk?" The doorman asked, posing the inevitable yet expected question.

Carmine glanced at Noctis, who was currently hanging his greatcoat on a provided coat stand - the sheathed fighting knife was still strapped to the left sleeve - and Noctis subtly nodded in response to her handing over her own zweihander. The girl looked apprehensively at the massive sheathed blade before attempting to carry it, but only managing to ever so slightly lift it above the table before dropping the weapon with a loud thud due to its sheer weight.

"Do you need help?" Carmine asked, picking up her sword with one hand and leaning it on her shoulder while placing the drum magazines on the table.

"Um… yeah, I do…" the girl said hesitantly, watching with what looked like wonder as Carmine scooped the drum magazines back up. "Just put them in an open cabinet over there," she continued, gesturing to point inside what appeared to be a military-style armory in a back room.

"Can I keep this?" Noctis suddenly asked, presenting his disguised cane to the doorman.

The girl suddenly looked simultaneously uncertain and exasperated - the latter emotion being one that Carmine could really empathise with - and scrutinised the cane for a while before asking, in a clipped tone, "May I ask _why_ you're bringing in a walking cane? Forgive me, but you seem about a few decades too young to need one."

Noctis stared at her for a moment, seemingly pondering his response, before calmly pulling back his left sleeve to reveal his prosthetic arm. The doorman went pale, taking a step back, before appearing to compose herself.

"Oh… I see…"

"The injury is psychosomatic, you see, so my leg goes stiff sometimes. I don't actually need the cane that badly, but it's just there in case I need the extra support."

"Then it's fine, I guess?" The doorman replied, though her tone still sounded somewhat questioning. "Are there any hidden functions that might pose a danger to other patrons, though?"

"I don't believe so, no. At least, there really isn't any cause for uncertainty in my opinion," Noctis replied.

"What do you mean?"

"He means nothing," Carmine replied curtly, slapping the back of Noctis's head. "Tis just stupid male posturing."

The same amused snorts returned with a vengeance, and an understanding smile emerged on the girl's features. "I see. Well, everything seems to be in order. Enjoy yourselves," she said, waving them into the club itself.

After wishing the hapless doorman good day, they entered the club proper. It was a surprisingly small affair, with a central corridor branching off into three rooms; to the left was a coffee room where more substantial food and beverages were served, while to the right was a drawing room where club members relaxed and enjoyed the company of one another. The central door, which the couple had passed through, led to a large ballroom.

The ballroom was a large, mostly empty room. To their immediate left was a bar where patrons could grab alcoholic drinks, while on the far side of the room was a stage on which performers were situated. Currently it hosted what appeared to be a Mistralian version of the opera, and there were already rows of luxuriously cushioned chairs on which interested club members could sit to watch the show.

"Ah, nearly forgot these," Noctis suddenly exclaimed, fishing out two comms beads from a pocket in his uniform. He offered one to Carmine, who took it and set it up as required, before he stuffed the other one into his ear. "We are in," he said into the newly set up comms channel.

"Great," Icarus's voice said. "Lapis has run into some… unforeseen delays, and will be a few minutes later than planned. Other than that, we're on schedule."

"What do you mean by… delays?"

"Oh, it's nothing too concerning. She's just trying to get her bearings back, that's all."

"I hope that you know what you're talking about."

"Relax, boss, it'll be fine. Just sit back, relax, talk to some people and steal the member register. It should be almost criminally easy in an establishment like this."

"I know. Over and out."

"Roger."

They seemed to be drawing annoyed stares from some of the patrons at that point, probably because they had burst in during the middle of the performance.

"Shall we enjoy the show?" Noctis asked quietly, gesturing to an empty row of seats. "I'm guessing that people here won't exactly be receptive to conversation before the curtains fall."

"Agreed," Carmine said, sitting down in one of the seats. Noctis sat down to her right and leant back in his own chair to achieve his desired level of comfort.

Unfortunately for her, the opera appeared to be scripted entirely in Mistralian - a language she actually did not understand. That, along with the ostentatious and brightly coloured costumes they wore, practically guaranteed that she would have no idea at all as to what was happening on stage.

"What is going on?" Carmine whispered to the side. Noctis, on the other hand, was watching the show with a special kind of knowing disinterest that could only have come from having seen the entire story before.

"This particular opera is called 'The Generals of the Yang Family'. It's centred around a military family that lived long ago in feudal-era Mistral, before the kingdom was unified by warlord emperors to create the precursor dynasties that set the stage for what exists now," Noctis explained enthusiastically. "Considering that mankind has been at war with the Grimm for essentially as long as human history has been a thing, it's understandably a very popular story."

"That makes sense; a constant state of conflict inevitably results in culture embracing the nature of conflict itself. That is in itself brought about by familiarity with continuous war, and consequently manifests in a war-like culture."

"Correct. The continual nature of this war results in the glamorisation of it, if only to preserve morale lest people stop signing on as Huntsmen..." Noctis said, trailing off before sighting wistfully. "Holy crap," he muttered.

"Anything wrong?"

"I've only just realised how fucked up our system is… we have structured an entire education system around raising impressionable teenagers… no, not teenagers, _children_ … and railroading them into becoming Huntsmen, where they'll fight and die against an enemy unending in numbers and fresh bodies to throw into the fight. You'll get what I mean when you see a Grimm spawning pool for the first time," Noctis muttered quietly, his dead black eyes fixed on the actors atop the stage. "And for us? Straight from basic education to the primary combat schools, and then to the Huntsmen academies, and then off to the battlefield. From the neighbourhood kindergarten to the elementary school, and then to Sanctum, and now to Beacon…"

"Hey."

"It's a war of attrition, one we're doomed to lose. We'll never be able to match them numerically, and they don't have any morale to lose besides. On the other hand, we actively get attacked if our morale falls since Grimm are attracted to negative emotions, and we can't boost our numbers significantly enough to matter before entering the realm of _eugenics_ \- and that's one step that, in my opinion, should _never_ be taken. Don't you see what I'm seeing, this fucked up system where children are literally led from their cradles to graves on some nightmarish battlefield? I don't even know why we even try anymore..."

"Respectfully speaking, partner of mine, seeing you act like this, talk like this… it frustrates me beyond words."

"Why?"

"You beg the question? Why do we even try? Well, I believe that we try because of _this_ ," Carmine replied sharply, gesturing to the performance in front of them. "To protect what is irreplaceable; human culture. Human civilisation. Is that not why you became a bodyguard - to protect that which is precious to you? Huntsmen do that, but on a much larger scale. You say that this system is 'fucked up', as you put it, but is this 'fucked up' system not necessary?"

"I…" Noctis said simply, staring at Carmine with unrestrained shock and awe. Come to think of it… this _was_ the first time that she had ever sworn, but what was done shall remain done. All that she could do now was to use that shock to carry over her message.

"It is a matter of pragmatism, is it not? A fighting force must be raised, and sadly your kingdoms lack the technical expertise of glorious Cainhurst to manufacture artificial humans to rival conventional Huntsmen, so there is no other option but to funnel young boys and girls into institutions that shall transform them into the soldiers needed to fight the war eternal."

"I get what you mean, I really do, but… it just doesn't sit right with me."

"Maybe it does not, but it is necessary," Carmine said, "But for now, answer my question?"

"Yeah?"

"Would you rather lay down and accept your fate, or die standing on your own two feet?"

Noctis smiled wistfully - it was more of a regretful grimace, to be honest. "If you had asked me that a few years ago, I'd have gone for the latter without blinking an eye. But now? I've known people who wanted to go out on their own terms… sure, they died standing, but only because there were so many rabid Grimm hemming them in that their bodies literally had no space to fall…"

"Noctis…"

"You might think that I'm brave, and you won't be the first person to make that mistake. The fact of the matter is that I'm absolutely fucking terrified - terrified of what might happen to those I care about if I make a single mistake. I've seen shit that would seem otherworldly to you because it's really _that_ messed up…"

"Like what?"

Noctis snorted derisively. "How about people being torn limb to limb by Grimm hordes? Perhaps crazed former Huntsmen turned serial killers vivisecting still living children in front of their parents and vice versa? Or…" he began, before choking up.

"Or?"

"Or maybe control freaks using their daughter's combat prowess to elevate themselves by sending her to dangerous tournaments over and over again… expecting her to win, throwing her into the wolves' den time and time again to reap the profits when his prized ' _champion_ ' comes out on top once again…"

"Wait, Pyrrha didn't _want_ to be a champion?"

"No, she did. Have you not seen how driven she is? Honestly, she's too _good_ to be related to someone like me. She's righteous, selfless, has everything covered morality-wise… she's smart, patient, modest, hardworking… she's basically everything I'm not."

"You _do_ share some characteristics with her, I would think," Carmine said, her voice taking on a weird middle ground between being stern and being comforting. "Take being selfless-"

"Me? Ha! I'm not selfless, I have a death wish!"

Carmine grabbed his collar and yanked Noctis towards her, suddenly bringing them face-to-face and dangerously close to each other.

"Answer my question. Do you wish to protect your sister, or go against her?"

"T-To protect her," Noctis stammered, clearly surprised by Carmine's sudden action. It looked like her manoeuvre had worked; her partner had clearly been snapped out of his depressive funk by now.

"And therefore, to protect her, you do not need to emulate her. She has her own personality, and you have yours. You have to remember; you are your _own_ _person_ beyond your sister."

"I know… we went through this before the warehouse op, remember?"

"But clearly it did not sink in. Did you finally apologise to your sister, by any chance?"

Noctis went silent, averting his eyes.

"Did you?"

"Actually… no, not yet."

Carmine sighed. "I know that you are scared that she will hate you, but that risk only becomes greater the more time you spend running away. Tell me, did you accept this mission in part because you wanted to get away from the situation at Beacon?"

Noctis stiffened, but at least he resumed eye contact - albeit reluctantly. "To be honest, yes."

"Are you actually serious?" Carmine asked, her voice deadpan.

"Um… yeah."

Carmine slapped the back of her partner's head. He winced for a moment, before looking more apologetic and guilty in response.

"Foolish idiot. You will have to confront that problem eventually, you know?" Carmine asked frustratedly, pulling harder on her partner's collar. "You simply cannot run away forever."

"I know… but what if she isn't willing to forgive me? I nearly killed her, after all, not to mention what happened with Sun…"

"Okay, this is what I am going to do. The second we touch down in Beacon after this stupid mission is over, I am dragging you over to team JNPR's room."

"What?" Noctis all but shrieked, only just managing to restrain himself by virtue of being stuck in the middle of a performance.

"That is right. No excuses, no distractions, and no _leaving_ until I personally see you apologise and make up with Pyrrha. Try and stop me, if you wish, but you should know how well _that_ will go."

"Um… alright," Noctis muttered, his face somehow appearing to darken in the dim light of the club. "I mean, there isn't anything I can possibly do to stop you, is there?"

Carmine smiled, but the smile was an uneasy one. "Not really, no."

Why was it suddenly so warm? The club was relatively well ventilated, and she was wearing only a frilly red dress instead of her usual multiple layers of thick padded leather under composite plate armour, so why did she suddenly feel like she was wearing full winter gear in the middle of a desert?

"Carmine…?" Noctis asked hesitantly.

"What?" She snapped, too focused on her own internal turmoil to pay him much mind.

"Could you, you know… let go of my collar?" Noctis continued apprehensively. "You're choking me, and it feels weirdly appealing for some reason…"

Carmine noticed that she still had a decent handful of the black wool that comprised her partner's uniform, and promptly let go with almost indecent haste. "Forgive me, I just happened to be caught in the heat of the moment!" She exclaimed apologetically.

"I-It's alright…"

Then they returned to watching the opera, but not without a healthy new degree of awkwardness.

Although she was now privy to the basic outline of what was going on with the opera story-wise, she still had absolutely no idea as to what was going on. She couldn't keep track of who was who on stage barring their rather _unique_ and almost painfully flamboyant costumes.

Indeed, barring the immediate fact that one of the main characters was currently killing himself by caving in his own head with a stone tablet, she didn't know what was supposed to be happening.

"Um… what do the colours on the characters symbolise?" Carmine asked discreetly to her right. Noctis, seemingly past the stage of despair he was previously at, turned towards her.

"Well… how do I explain this? The colours they wear on their face paint and on their clothes reveals the age, professions and personalities of their characters. Take the three core colours of Mistralian opera for example; red symbolises positive martial values like loyalty, integrity and courage. Black on the other hand symbolises firmness and impartiality along with suggesting a serious and taciturn character, while white represents brutality and cruelty - essentially, the main villain."

Carmine turned to regard him, taking in his almost entirely black uniform save for the white upper right sleeve, and couldn't help but find some sort of analogue between her partner's attire and the actors' costumes on stage. Her own clothing right now, that frilly red garment that currently replaced her blessed armour, also somehow took on some kind of symbolic meaning as well.

"Do other colours also hold some kind of meaning?"

"Of course. Purple conveys solemnity, serenity and a sense of justice. Yellow represents intelligence and calculation, or bravery when used in warrior roles. Blue shows uprightness and stubbornness, green indicates bravery and irascibility, and gold and silver are used to indicate the supernatural like celestials and demons."

"I see… that really is interesting. This art form seems to have quite an important visual aspect, rather unlike the traditional Valean form of opera."

"Valean opera focuses more on the musical aspect, of course, being centred around singing."

"That is correct. An astute observation, partner of mine."

"You know, I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic or not."

"Does it matter, in the end?"

"I suppose not."

"Then let us enjoy the show."

They resumed watching the opera in silence. Eventually, despite Carmine's continual lack of understanding which was salvaged in some way by her new knowledge of colour symbolism, the show drew to a close. The actors bowed one last time, before stepping off the stage amidst roaring applause - apparently most if not all of the patrons of the club had a vastly superior understanding of Mistralian opera compared to her own - from an audience that then dispersed.

The majority of them dispersed to either the coffee room or the drawing room, but a decent number of those present had seemingly decided to linger in the ballroom. The current crowd was gathered around circular standing tables, sipping alcoholic drinks obtained from the bar to the left of the main door.

"What shall we do next?" Carmine asked, glancing at her partner. Noctis shrugged in response.

"You find a way to get the register, while I ask around."

"Understood."

"Mister Argent?" A new voice rang out behind them, high and clear, prompting the two partners to turn around to inspect the new presence.

It was a thin, pale man dressed in the cossack that denoted him as a man of the cloth. The easily recognisable white garment, decorated with gold embroidery, only served to make the newcomer seem only a tad bit… off for some reason. The fake smile on his face and the unsettling glint in his gold eyes only solidified her first impressions of the priest - a dangerous man that could not be trusted.

"Heads up," her comms bead suddenly chimed in, carrying Icarus's voice at a nearly imperceptible volume. "The priest is a Faunus; his aspect is a scorpion tail that's currently under his clothes. Remember that the animal aspects of Faunus can still be dangerous; take the Bloody Crow for example-"

"What?" Carmine asked, directing the response to both her sniper teammate and the dangerous newcomer.

"Yeah, your dad. Apparently he got into a fight with two rogue Huntsmen in a bookshop a while ago - I was browsing old news articles that I'd missed," Icarus explained. "I got bored, don't ask. Anyways, apparently they came off worse for it, especially since they found blood and weaponised feathers all over the place. Witness statements corroborate as well."

Carmine sighed, starting to move away when she paused.

"Ishmael? You okay?"

"Later."

"Understood."

The comms shut off, allowing her to pay more attention to the developing scene before her.

The priest offered his left hand to Noctis, practically forcing him to return the gesture with his prosthetic arm. The handshake happened, and Carmine couldn't help but notice the calculative smirk that was on his face - it was as if he were evaluating the artificial limb.

"Good grip strength. One might even call it _vice like_ ," the priest said, raising an appraising eyebrow. "The limb is artificial, I presume."

"Prosthetic. I got it replaced in my youth," Noctis replied curtly.

"Hmmmm, how... unfortunate. Surviving such a trial is _truly_ an impressive feat for one so young. But where are my manners?" The priest asked rhetorically, the apparent indiscretion seeming too deliberate to be an accidental one. "Father Callows, at your service. But please, call me Tyrian."

"Father Callows it is, then. I dare not wish to presume familiarity, after all."

"A shame, Noctis. However, as a man of the cloth, I am not supposed to indulge in such pleasures of the flesh as what we see here," the now named Father Callows said, gesturing around him. "I am here for a very specific purpose."

"What is that purpose, then?" Noctis asked evenly. "Go on. Get it over with."

"I am here to pass you this," Father Callows said, passing over a small piece of paper. Carmine couldn't help but notice that it was angled directly away from her, so that a blank side was all that she could see. A photograph, perhaps?

Noctis took it anyways, taking the paper with his right hand and looking at it. His expression instantly hardened, and visible tremors seemed to seize his remaining flesh arm.

"Where did you get this." A flat statement, not even a question, but an accusation all the same.

"Why don't you find out?" Father Carrows - no, Tyrian - replied, gesturing to the bar. "Perhaps we could have a small chat? And as for your partner, Miss Reinhardt-"

"What about me?" Carmine snapped. "You seem to have forgotten that I am here.'

"My apologies, Carmine. You know, I've heard that you wish to obtain the club register," Tyrian noted. "An ultimately useless venture, but an admirable one. If I were you, I'd go and get it now - probably within the next five minutes, lest you miss your opportunity."

"What opportunity?"

"You'll find out."

"Carmine," Noctis ground out. "Please."

"I… understand," she reluctantly replied.

"I wish you luck," Tyrian said dismissively, waving her away. "Now, Mister Argent, as we were saying?"

Noctis subtly passed the photo to Carmine, seemingly unnoticed by the priest. "Shall we go, then?" He asked.

"Very well, then," the priest replied.

Then, the two of them walked off to the bar, one with the relaxed posture of a man with the upper hand while the other one was stiff with apprehension.

Carmine finally looked at the photo, and froze herself. "Motherfucker," she said, her voice tight with shock. Again with the milestones - this was the first time she had unironically sworn in her _life_ \- but that could be addressed later. "Daedalus."

"Yeah?"

"The mission just got _very_ personal."

Indeed it was, if only because of what was on the photo.

"For whom?"

"The boss."

"How personal?"

"Enough for him to level the entire city if he has to."

"Fuck."

Icarus had aptly managed to sum up the situation with that one word, because what was on the picture was an image of Pyrrha - obviously unaware of the person taking the picture, and wearing her Beacon uniform.

"Let me guess, it's his sister."

"You have hit the situation right on its head, teammate of mine."

The fact that the picture was taken through the scope of a sniper rifle didn't help matters as well.

 **(Evil cliffhanger is evil, I know. You might notice the conspicuous lack of murder in this chapter, but don't worry, you'll get your fill next chapter - that, I promise.)**


	27. Three Men in a Bar

**(Yes, I actually did my research on mental illness, especially on Borderline Personality Disorder.** **Again, trigger warning is obligatory. Here might be a good time to back out now if this kind of stuff makes you uncomfortable, but I'd have to say then you're missing out.)**

A psychopathic priest and a sociopathic bodyguard were sitting next to each other in a bar, although... could it be said for sure, though, whether the latter was actually a sociopath or not?

Psychologically speaking, a psychopath is one who has a literal physical inhibition that doesn't allow them to have empathy. A sociopath is one who still has the physical ability for sympathy or empathy, but suppresses that part of themselves because of trauma. Both still can know right from wrong, good from evil, and have a secure grasp on reality, but for some reason they do not or cannot care about anyone else.

In that case, was the bodyguard not a sociopath? The whole reason he was all but trembling with rage right now was because he cared for somebody other than himself, so perhaps he _displays_ sociopathic tendencies while not being an outright sociopath?

Could it then be Borderline Personality Disorder? Commonly observed symptoms include pattern of unstable intense relationships, such as idealizing someone to an unhealthy extent one moment and then suddenly believing the person doesn't care or actively hates them, as well as rapid changes in self-identity and self-image that include shifting goals and values, seeing oneself as bad or as if one doesn't exist at all. They also consist of periods of stress-related paranoia and loss of contact with reality, lasting from a few minutes to a few hours, as well as impulsive and risky behaviour, and ongoing feelings of emptiness.

If a qualified psychologist were to get the bodyguard to sit down for therapy for multiple prolonged periods of time, they would easily be able to justify a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder with sociopathic tendencies. That would be a problem, because BPD patients are notoriously challenging to treat - not only because the disorder itself is complicated and often stigmatized, but also because its symptoms reflect ingrained patterns of thinking and behavior that could have been established during one's formative years and would thus be very hard to undo.

However, unlike the priest next to him, there was still something left to save. Again, if a qualified psychologist somehow managed to arrange a session or two with the priest, they would find themselves in the same room as a textbook psychopath who also had both masochistic and sadistic tendencies. Oh, and he was also an unrepentant, psychotic, serial killer.

Indeed, if they had to choose between the two men at the bar, most if not all qualified psychologists who were themselves sane would gladly take the bodyguard. That way, they had an infinitely higher chance of surviving the encounter.

However, while a nuanced comparison between the two men at the bar by a qualified psychologist could be very interesting indeed, their actions and words would prove to be far more exciting.

"How did you get that fucking photo?" Noctis ground out, a tumbler of whiskey gripped tightly in his right hand. Thankfully it was in his right hand - the tumbler would have already been crushed if it was in the grip of his prosthetic hand.

Tyrian shrugged, a smirk on his face. "Oh, I have my sources," he said, before waving at the bartender to get her attention. "The usual, please."

"One Shirley Temple, coming right up," the bartender said. "A pleasure to see you here again, good Father."

"I hope for your sake that the pleasure is solely intellectual," Tyrian replied, coyly raising a single eyebrow. The bartender's cheeks reddened slightly. "My duties to spread the word of God prevent me from reciprocating anything else, of course."

"Shame," the bartender muttered, before sighing wistfully. Noctis couldn't fault her for her obvious attraction - Tyrian was definitely a good-looking man, after all, if a dangerous one.

Noctis sighed himself, taking another sip of his whiskey. The liquor burned as it went down, but did nothing to quell the seething ball of terror in his gut.

"Spit it out," Noctis snarled, turning towards Tyrian. "Tell me, who did you get to take that photo and why?"

"Why spit it out? Might as well savour the mystery, I say," the priest responded, taking a small sip of his own drink.

"Because-"

"Because somebody pointed a sniper rifle at your sister?" Tyrian pointedly asked, ignoring Noctis's reaction of shock at the priest being privy to that knowledge. "Let me ask you this. Would a normal photo have _scoped out_ your attention so fully and completely?

"What…?"

Tyrian laughed. It was a high and clear laugh, the shortness of which failed to conceal exactly how cold it was. "Oh, you don't know the half of it!" The priest chuckled, before snapping his fingers.

Everything… the bar, the club, the building, the street, the city, the country, the kingdom, the continent, the planet… it all became so small, so meaningless. Noctis and the priest were now sitting on two objects, enveloped in a swirling darkness studded with pinpricks of light and a blue-green glow on his peripheral vision.

"What is this?" Noctis hollered, trying to get up from whatever he was sitting on but failing. He found that he was pinned in place on his seat… was it even a barstool anymore, or something else? Something _more_?

Tyrian continued laughing, pausing only to respond with "The great lake of mud, hidden now, from sight! The cosmos, of course!"

"You're insane!" Noctis screamed, struggling to get out of his seat but still failing.

Tyrian got up from his own seat, starting to circle around the restrained Huntsman. Noctis found his range of movement restricted further, especially his arms - it was as if he were in a straitjacket.

"Ahh, Kos, or some say Kosm…" the false priest mused, pacing round and round. "Do you hear our prayers? As you once did for the vacuous Rom, grant us eyes, grant us eyes…"

The all-consuming darkness, studded with little star-like pinpricks of light, surrounding them started to peel open. That same bioluminescent blue-green glow that tickled at the corner of Noctis's vision began to form little u-shaped lines everywhere… in the sudden light, they seemed to bulge outwards as if there were balls hidden under them, and then separate lines started to rise up from the greater curve to form ellipses.

No, not ellipses… _eyelids_.

Eyes, closed yet bulging eyes of that blue-green nightmare light fading into existence, then slowly opening… everywhere.

 _Everywhere_.

"What the fuck?" He screamed louder, now finding that he couldn't even thrash around. For all intents and purposes, he was paralysed.

Tyrian continued cackling, stretching his arms outwards and upwards to behold the heavens. "I saw you the moment you set foot in my city! Did you really think that you could hide from me? Me? My prayers have been granted! The eyes on my brain have cleansed me of my beastly idiocy, just as they shall for you!"

"You're insane! Let me out, let me out, let me out!"

"Ahh, Kos, or some say Kosm… Do you hear our prayers?" Tyrian continued praying, seemingly ignoring his captive's pleas and the eyes of light surrounding them. "No, we shall abandon the dream. No one can catch us! No one can stop us now!"

"For fuck's sake, let me out of here!"

"For we see all!" Tyrian exclaimed, turning to stare Noctis down with eyes holding the characteristic glint of madness. "We have been granted eyes, and we shall use them to _see_! Ah, blessed sight, show us the truth of our reality… new ideas, of the higher plane!"

"What do you mean?"

"When I said that I saw you, I _saw_ you. I saw what makes you tick, the basic components and algorithms that you run on… and I saw how to deconstruct you to the tiniest mechanisms, how to break you apart and put you back together to serve! To serve my Goddess!" The false priest yelled, breaking into new fits of laughter.

"You-"

"But luckily for you… that's all for later. And it won't be my Goddess you'll be serving, no, you'll be the slave of something worse. Far, _far_ worse."

Tyrian stopped laughing and snapped his fingers. The eyes of blue-green light slid shut and lost their arcane glow, while the swirling light-studded darkness around them dissipated.

"You motherfucking-" Noctis began angrily, finally finding that he had gained sufficient mobility to get up from the barstool, but this was cut short by the bartender clearing her throat.

"Is there anything wrong?" The bartender asked pointedly, brushing dirty blonde hair out of her face to better glare at him.

"Ummm… no. Nothing at all, madam."

"That's a good boy," she replied offhandedly, the unspoken warning to not repeat his behaviour proving to be very obvious indeed.

"Come now, friend," Tyrian said, with a smile on his face that seemed more fake than genuine. "Though the pleasures brought by liquor might be denied to me, for it will cloud the words of God, you have not forsaken its propensity to open the heart and calm the mind. Shall we resume our conversation?"

Noctis sighed, returning to his previous seated position. "Fine. But you'd better give me some answers."

"No, not answers. More like pointers or hints, so that you'll be able to answer the questions yourself."

"You're not my goddamn primary school teacher, so don't lead me on a wild goose chase," Noctis snarled, his right hand going towards the hilt of the cane-sword in his left hand.

"I won't. Now, you had some questions."

"Right. First, what the hell was that? The eyes?"

"Oh, those," Tyrian replied coyly, taking another sip of his mocktail. "They're always around, you see. It's just that they're a bit hard to see, if you're not trained to expose them… look behind the bar, for example."

Noctis saw that the priest was pointing, and followed his finger to see exactly what he was referring to. For a second he glimpsed another one of those arcane eyes, slowly forcing its way into existence, crack open behind the bottles of liquor and stare at him before closing to dim back into nothingness.

"Mischievous things, aren't they? Always spying on people without anybody knowing a peep about them."

"You enjoy this, don't you?" Noctis asked, annoyance in his voice. "Creeping people out. It gets you off."

"Maybe it does," Tyrian replied offhandedly, taking another sip of his mocktail. "Maybe it doesn't."

"Just give me a straight answer for once."

"Where's the fun in that?"

"Enough," Noctis snapped, his tone entirely serious. "Now, about the photo."

"Ah, the photo. That little enigma… isn't my responsibility."

"What?"

"I only knew who you were when you entered Argus, no sooner. Do you honestly think that I had the time to deduce your identity, go all the way to Vale, go trekking in the Emerald Forest to find a vantage point somewhere near Beacon Academy, take the perfect shot and print the photo, and then return to Argus just to pass it to you?" Tyrian asked dismissively.

"That doesn't change the fact that you had the photo in the first place!"

"But I wasn't the one who took it!" The false priest snapped back. "I have my own life, after all. I don't even own a gun. It's part of the Ten Commandments, you see; _thou shalt not kill_."

"Then who took the damn picture in the first place?"

"Ah, now _that_ is why it's such an enigma," Tyrian drawled, finishing off his drink. Passing the empty glass to the bartender, the false priest made to stand up and leave. "Don't worry, I won't spoil the fun for you."

"Where the hell do you think you're going?" Noctis seethed.

"Home. It's getting late, after all."

"Motherfucker."

Tyrian sighed, looking over his shoulder to speak to Noctis. "You want a hint for the picture? Fine... Morgan."

"Very helpful-"

"Custodian Morgan le Fay. That's all I'm willing to disclose, but take heed; she isn't nearly as amiable as I am. If you see her… flee."

"You-" Noctis began, getting up from his own stool.

Tyrian, now ignoring him, began to walk away.

He was about to go after the priest when his comms bead started buzzing. Discreetly raising his left hand to his ear, he switched the comms channel on.

"Ahab," Carmine's voice said curtly. "Front-of-house. Get over here asap."

"Wait-"

"Now!"

"Wilco," Noctis conceded, pulling down the visor of his peaked cap while moving off to exit the club. While exiting, he had the misfortune of bumping into Tyrian by accident.

"What's the rush?" The priest drawled, just out of sight.

"No time for you." Noctis snapped, rushing past him to the front door.

Unfortunately, he didn't turn back. If he had managed to see Tyrian take out his scroll and make a call, he could have seen the impending nightmare coming.

/-/

Carmine, slipping past the cluster of patrons entering the club, managed to retrace her steps to the reception room. Pushing open the heavy wooden doors, the feeling that something was deeply wrong started to dawn upon her.

Firstly, the receptionist was nowhere to be seen. The door to the back room - the doubled-up armoury and office - was ajar, and there was an ever so slight smear of blood on it.

Secondly, Noctis's fighting knife was missing. The sheath was still strapped to the wrist of his coat, yes, but the knife itself was gone. Missing.

Carmine raised her hand to the comms bead in her ear, toggling the switch to open the comms channel. "Ahab," she said hurriedly "Front-of-house. Get over here asap."

"Wait-" Noctis began. A delay would be intolerable, and so they couldn't afford to dawdle.

"Now!" Carmine snapped.

"Wilco."

Assured that support was incoming, Carmine slowly crept into the open office. What she saw made her tainted blood run cold.

The receptionist was slumped against the wall of the back room, surrounded by a small pool of blood that gently trickled from a deep puncture wound at her neck. The cheongsam she was wearing was proving to be rather absorbent, and it was now irreparably soaked with the doorman's lifeblood… silk, perhaps? The wound also seemed to weep some kind of dark purple fluid, and a quick test with a finger proved that the blood was still warm.

There was a large nondescript book in her hand, secured both by the fact that the girl had huddled it to her chest before expiring... and because Noctis's fighting knife had been driven through her hand and into the book to pin it there.

The doorman's dead eyes stared at Carmine with the unblinking, accusing gaze of a corpse. Other than the fact that there was a murder victim in the back room, nothing else seemed to have been disturbed. No, it was as if whoever had done this had left everything else _untouched_.

"What's going on-" Noctis began, bursting into the room behind her. "What the fuck?"

"Exactly what I wanted to say," Carmine replied solemnly.

"Dammit. She seemed like a nice girl, all things considered," Noctis muttered, striding over to shut the doorman's eyes for the final time. "Give her eternal rest, O Lord God, and may your light shine on her forever…"

"A prayer for the dead?"

"Yes."

"I did not think that you were a religious man."

"I'm not. It just seemed like the right thing to do."

"I see…" Carmine dropped off. "The register?"

"Ah," Noctis said simply. He reached down to the dagger impaling the doorman's hand and gingerly pulled it out, allowing the book to slide out of her embrace. An equally careful hand deftly grasped the book by the spine, picking it up and lifting it up for Carmine to inspect.

"Thanks," Carmine replied, patting the presumed register to remove the worst of the detritus on its unmarked red leather hardcover. She turned to Noctis, only now being able to fully appreciate her partner's presence.

He had somehow managed to throw on his signature black leather greatcoat on the way here, and was currently working on the buttons and belt that were meant to secure the garment. The fighting knife had been returned to its sheath on his left wrist, but a discarded piece of soiled tissue paper off to the side implied that he had managed to clean the blade beforehand.

Noctis audibly sighed. "A real shame… but what sick fuck would do this?"

"What do you mean?"

"Whoever did this stood to gain nothing. They left the register here with the body, stole nothing from the storeroom, and didn't even bother to do anything else. They just killed her, planted the register, and left. Why?"

"There is the matter of the wound, as well," Carmine added on. "The purple fluid… it implies some kind of hypodermically injected substance. Venom, perhaps?"

"But who on Remnant would have venom on them?"

"Wait…" Carmine mulled, managing to draw up some recollections from before. "Icarus said something about the priest we met being a scorpion Faunus. Apparently his aspect was a tail with a stinger."

"Then he's a suspect. The prime suspect, at that. There was something off about him…

Carmine opened her mouth to add on her own opinion of Father Carrow, but was interrupted by a deafening explosion from the front door of the club.

"Go, go, go!" A loud unidentifiable male voice hollered, amidst the sudden cloud of dust and smoke kicked up by what she belatedly realised was a breaching charge.

There were coronas of white light, or rather cones of illuminated dust that bobbed and weaved along with their sources. The green laser sights that pierced the smog, however, wavered far less. Carmine counted five in total.

"What's going on?" Noctis muttered under his breath, more to himself than to anybody else, before continuing with a more audible voice, "Carmine, get back."

"It makes more sense for me to stay in front," Carmine whispered in response, bodily tearing the door of the weapons locker off of its hinges to retrieve her zweihander. "Let the one who has both armour and-"

She was interrupted by two shots to the upper torso that, besides pulverising her heart and lungs, also happened to ruin her dress. A shame… she liked that dress.

Carmine collapsed to the ground of her own free will, reasoning that playing dead would prove to be more strategically useful than just standing around after receiving two presumably fatal shots.

"This is the police!" The first voice shouted.

"Hands on your head and on your knees now!" Another voice shouted, levelling his own weapon at Noctis so that the green laser sight was planted squarely on his forehead.

The dust and smoke, having managed to clear up over time, allowed a better view of their assailants. The three gunmen before them - two had evidently split off to secure the interior of the club - were outfitted with black military-style fatigues almost entirely hidden underneath body armour, with heavy vests covering the entirety of their torsos, while black combat helmets and balaclavas covered everything save for the area around their eyes. In their hands were carbines outfitted with tactical lights and laser sights, as well as being chambered in 5.56mm, which explained the bullet fragments that had caused so much internal damage.

Noctis glanced at Carmine for confirmation, and an ever so subtle nod from her persuaded him to stick with the charade and freeze on the spot. His cane-sword, Carmine realised, was still in his left hand and ready to be drawn at a moment's notice.

"That's our job done," the other voice snarled, pointing the muzzle of his carbine straight at Noctis's head. "Gentlemen, you know the orders we got from the higher-ups. Burn the woman's body."

"Are you sure, sir?"

"We have the Matador right here, sergeant. I'm not taking _any_ chances."

"Understood."

What?

From her position of playing possum, slumped against the wall, Carmine watched with an unblinking stare as one of the armed men splashed some kind of fluid from a red canister onto her.

On the back of his vest, she saw the word "POLICE" embossed in large white letters. So Argus's law enforcement has been set on them, then? That posed some new complications…

Wait… what was that? Gasoline… oh, no...

The only disadvantage of her cursed blood was its inflammability… along with the fact that Vileblood regeneration relied on _living_ biomass. Burned flesh was well and truly dead, and if suddenly there wasn't enough living flesh left to work with…

Well, then she was dead. A consciousness trapped in a ruined body.

"What do we do with the spare?" A third voice asked, sounding slightly more unsure than the other three.

"Arrest him or shoot him, I don't care. He's a murderer either way," one of the figures said dismissively, gesturing towards Noctis with the barrel of his gun. "Doesn't matter, so long as we cremate the other one."

"The other one?"

"The whore," the first voice said, nudging Carmine with his foot.

Noctis's body visibly went stiff. All emotion seemed to be washed out of him as his expression suddenly hardened.

"Excuse me?" He suddenly asked, causing the three armed men to jump slightly before, in unison, all pointing their guns straight at him. "Did I hear that right? You were going to burn my friend's corpse?"

'You, quiet. Now," The first voice ordered, his voice low yet still bearing a note of fear.

"And you called her a whore? I see… and you were thinking of doing that, and then killing me, before walking away as if nothing had happened. I guess there's no helping it, then."

"Are you kidding me?" The second voice muttered. "Don't make this harder than it has to be, please. We're just trying to do our jobs-"

Everyone present felt it. All the peripheral noise, from the panicking patrons deeper in the club to the distant sirens outside, fell silent. There was something in the air… something oppressive, like a physical weight blanketing them.

To Carmine, it was as if something were breathing down her neck. It felt like she had gotten sloppy in her training and hadn't been watching her own surroundings, and one of Cainhurst's many restless ghosts was about to stab her in the back.

It felt just like when Noctis had gone berserk in Beacon during the food fight gone almost tragically wrong. It felt just like when she had _first met_ her leader.

Deep down inside, Carmine realised that she had never seen Noctis _truly_ cut loose. Not until now.

This was bloodlust at its finest… and it was coming from her partner.

The metallic rasp of Noctis drawing his cane-sword was almost imperceptible past what he said next. It wasn't even a battle cry, just a statement, but the words that came out of his mouth still managed to give her chills all the same.

"Tonight, I think I'll join the hunt."

Noctis moved with impossible speed, nothing more than a blur of ferocity and blood-frenzy. His first strike cut the leading policeman's gun out of his hands, along with happening to sever both of the man's arms.

"God Almi-"

All Carmine saw was a flash of silver and in the next instant, the officer had been impaled through the throat - effectively silencing whatever he had been about to scream.

The other two policemen opened fire with their carbines, only managing to tear apart the ash clone of her partner's semblance. Noctis's form reappeared behind them, and the blade of his cane-sword punched through one of them from behind so that the blood-soaked blade erupted through the vest covering their chest.

By the time that the first policeman's body had finished sliding down the now blood-streaked wall, the second was already gurgling out his last breaths with a pierced aorta. The third and final policeman didn't try to fight further, instead choosing to turn and run away.

He didn't even make it out of the room. Noctis offhandedly slashed at his lower leg with his sword, and a wet snap could be heard as his Achilles' tendon was fully severed. The man stumbled and faltered, allowing Noctis to bodily pin him to the wall and to slit his throat with the smatchet that had suddenly unfolded into the Hunter's left hand.

To say that his throat had been _slit_ was perhaps an understatement… perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that the man had been nearly _beheaded_. Practically everything except for the spine itself had been cleanly cut through, meaning that the man's neck had effectively been severed with a single stroke.

Carmine steadily got up to her feet, retrieving her sheathed zweihander. "Efficient work, I must say," she called out.

Noctis reappeared beside her, sheathing his cane-sword and transforming the weapon into its SMG form. "They insulted you," he replied evenly. "The response was mandated, I'd say."

"Sorry about the dress, though. I know that it was expensive…"

Noctis raised a hand to forestall the oncoming apology, before responding, "It isn't your fault. We didn't expect for… well, _this_ to happen," he said, gesturing at the dead policemen on the floor.

"I know, but…" Carmine dropped off, unsure what to say next. "It was a nice dress," she finished lamely.

"A shame that it got ruined like this," Noctis replied casually, loading and cocking his submachine gun. The left-side magazine was slotted into the receiver, which meant that her partner was running the AP rounds. "You looked really nice in it, though that's probably because you look nice in general."

What? Bah, more flattery. Though said flattery didn't go appreciated...

Carmine blushed, even while placing the sheathed zweihander on the ground tip-first in front of her. With a mental command, a single portal of crimson light appeared over her head before descending to sweep down her form. She got a homesickness-inducingly familiar flash of the innards of Cainhurst before a second portal, going up from her feet this time, returned her to her previous place on Remnant. When it was done, she was still standing as before - but in her full war plate instead of the dress that she had been wearing previously.

"Wait, why didn't you do that before?" Noctis asked, turning towards her in mild surprise.

"The process destroys any clothing I am wearing in favour of the armour."

"Then why… oh."

"Exactly," Carmine summarised, securing the sheathed zweihander to her armoured back with a magnetic clack before drawing the blade and hefting it with both hands. "When I say that I liked that dress, I mean that I _really_ liked that dress."

"Then the lien was well spent," Noctis replied earnestly.

"Alpha team to Beta team, please respond," an electronic voice buzzed, from what appeared to be a handheld radio strapped to the collars of the dead policemen. "Beta team, respond asap. Be adviced, the Matador is in the immediate vicinity-"

"We should go," Carmine said. "Before reinforcements arrive."

"Yeah, we should," Noctis replied, already stalking over to the open doorway of the club's back room before raising his left hand behind his shoulder. Three fingers were raised.

Carmine, understanding what he meant, waited as the fingers one by one lowered themselves.

Three.

Two.

One.

And then, as the final finger receded to form a complete fist, she followed her leader as the two of them rushed out into the main reception room.

Noctis spun on the balls of his feet, firing off two three-round bursts just as two more policemen burst out of the club's main doors. Carmine didn't turn to look, but she definitely heard two more bodies crumple to the floor.

"Icarus," she heard Noctis whisper urgently into the comms. "What's going on out there?"

"What the fuck did you two do?" Icarus asked angrily. "The entire place is swarming with cops, and I just saw the SDU bust their way in!"

"The SDU isn't a problem anymore!" Noctis shot back. "How's the situation looking outside?"

"SDU?" Carmine mouthed.

"Special Duties Unit," Noctis mouthed back. "Argus's counter-terrorism unit."

"Wait… you killed them?" Icarus asked, his tone one of dread.

"We were forced to cut our way out, Daedalus," Noctis said monotonously.

Icarus audibly sighed. "Dammit. Alright, here's the situation. There are about five or six police cars and two APCs courtesy of the local SDU outside… for personnel, twenty normal police officers and eleven SDU officers. It's a death trap."

"Not if they're expecting us," Noctis mused.

"What do you mean?"

"Cause a distraction, perhaps? Preferably something that'll _really_ draw their attention."

"I mean, I _could_ cause one of the armoured cars to blow up…"

"Do that. On my signal."

"Alright. Here goes…"

Noctis paused, quickly sidestepping to hunker down behind the fortified wall of the club's main entrance, before risking a peek outside. Carmine did the same, but in the other direction.

Sure enough, the street outside was packed with law enforcement. The patrol cars had been parked in a roughly concave shape, providing cover for the numerous police officers who were keeping an assortment of handguns and the occasional shotgun trained on the ajar club door. The two SDU APCs were placed further behind, presumably to allow the occupants some breathing room to prepare for a second assault.

It was currently nighttime, and a quick glance at the clock tower of the nearby church proved that the time was currently about 8.30pm.

"Remind me again, how exactly are you going to take out an APC?" Noctis asked discreetly into the comms.

"Their armour is only rated to hold up against rifle fire," Icarus's voice replied. "And just so you know, I'm packing 20mm rounds. One shot to the engine block should do them in."

"Anything else that we need to know about the two targets?" Noctis asked again.

"One of the APCs is above a gas main. Blowing that one up would tear open the gas main…"

"Essentially turning the entire street into a fuel-air bomb…" Carmine said slowly, subconsciously inching away from the open door of the club.

"Well, do you have a better idea?" Icarus asked, his voice taking on a somewhat annoyed tone.

"Maybe shooting the _other_ APC?" Carmine asked rhetorically in response.

"Icarus, please, for the love of God, shoot the other APC," Noctis declared uneasily. "I'd like to not blow up the immediate vicinity, especially when we happen to be _in_ the immediate vicinity."

"An unusually wise decision, leader of mine," Carmine remarked snidely, raising an eyebrow behind the concealing presence of her helmet's visor.

"I don't have a death wish…" Noctis began, before realising his self-contraction from earlier during the opera. "Anyhow. As for you, Ishmael, we'll need your shields to cover us from the regular officers."

"Understood. Shall I put up a barrier now, or-"

"Not yet. Wait for Daedalus to take his shot, which means to wait for my signal."

"Daedalus," Carmine said into the comms. "Do you have a clear path of retreat? The police are hardly not going to hear the report of your shot, after all."

"Yeah, I do. I can fly, remember?" Icarus responded. "What about you two?"

"I'll figure something out," Noctis replied, inching closer to the door. "As for the signal…"

Carmine tensed, priming her shield generator to create the necessary barrier. "Our route, dear leader?"

"Just follow me, but make sure to cover us until we reach an alleyway."

"Wilco."

"And the signal…" Noctis dropped off, before snapping his fingers. "Now!"

There was a thunderous bang, and one of the two APCs outside all but disappeared inside the giant orange fireball that had burst into life on the street.

"Forward, now!" Their team leader yelled, gesturing with his free left hand as he dashed out of the club.

Carmine threw up a barrier between them and the panicking policemen, managing to block the remarkably few shots being sent in their direction, before she followed her leader into the veritable maze of alleyways that Argus seemed to have in abundance.

"What do you have planned next?" Carmine asked, her question coming out in a panicked holler.

"I'm going to cash in a few favours!" Noctis hollered back, his free hand fishing out his scroll from within his greatcoat. "Continue to cover me!"

"What? Are you insane?"

"No, I just know how this city works!"

The alleyways would have proved hard to run through if the two of them weren't Huntsmen; they weren't lit even with the barest of lights, and they were sometimes so cluttered that it proved nearly impossible to avoid tripping over something. Somehow, they still managed to flee through those little paths - with her leader simultaneously making a call on his scroll, no less.

Carmine glanced behind her to check that, yes, none of the policemen from behind had had enough presence of mind to even bother attempting to pursue them. Meanwhile, Noctis had transformed his submachine gun back into its cane-sword form… which was now attached to his waist while he fumbled with his scroll mid-run and placed it to his left ear.

"Ginseng? Hey, it's been a while!"

And currently her leader was seemingly catching up with some old friends… while fleeing from Mistral's law enforcement. On the off chance that the burgeoning conversation actually led anywhere, she refrained from slapping him on the back of the head.

"Yeah, so remember that favour you owed me? I'm cashing it in."

Perhaps it wasn't as frivolous as she thought. Carmine now listened with new interest, but only managed to catch a few snippets of Noctis's side of the conversation.

"Remember where Madam Lim's congee stall usually is? Yeah, that street stall where there's a little old lady who only sells congee with pork and century egg for, like, two lien per bowl? I'll need you to be just down the road…" Noctis said, dropping off before continuing, "Don't wait there for too long, it'll look suspicious. I'll be there with a plus one in about five minutes."

"Who was that?" Carmine finally asked, watching as Noctis ended the call and shoved the scroll back into his pocket mid-stride.

"Somebody who owes me big. This'll be the only time that he's bound to bail us out, though, so don't get used to it."

"What do you mean?"

"He's our designated driver," Noctis replied, reaching back to allow Carmine to take his hand. She did so without a second thought, allowing him to lead her along through alley after alley until reaching their destination.

She didn't know how long or how far the two of them ran, only that they did. The two of them finally emerged from the dank depths, finding themselves in a dimly lit street framed by nondescript apartment buildings. The only thing of note that was currently present was an ambulance, lights flashing and siren wailing.

The driver himself was another noteworthy figure, being a grizzled man with raggedy dirty-blonde hair and teeth blackened by the habit of chewing betel nuts. Realising that his passengers had arrived, he gave a jaunty wave in Noctis's direction.

"Hey, Ginseng!" Noctis hollered, waving back at the driver as the two of them moved closer. "Long time no see, eh?"

Now that Carmine was closer to the driver - presumably Ginseng - she could fully appreciate the reality of this situation. It was kind of hard to see in the dim light cast by the streetlights, but the ambulance driver's eyes were wide and his face was almost ghostly pale.

"Matador," the other man replied evenly, though not without the characteristic tremulousness that betrayed his fear. "It's been a while as well."

"So, you were saying something about a getaway vehicle?"

"I'll owe you nothing after I do this, right?"

"Yep," Noctis replied, but with false cheer in his voice. "You'd have paid your debt to me by then."

"Good, good," the ambulance driver said, before walking to the back of his vehicle and opening the doors. "Get in, before the cops come."

Carmine moved over to inspect the interior, and sure enough it was the interior of an ambulance. There was a gurney on the right side of the vehicle, and a cushioned seating area on the left. All in all, enough space for two or three people.

Noctis began to follow her but paused when he saw the interior. Then, he yelled, "Oi, Ginseng, there's only one bed!"

"Mate, you asked for a getaway vehicle plus one. That's what I delivered."

"But how the hell are we hiding two people in there?"

Ginseng - the now named ambulance driver - stepped gingerly into the back of his vehicle, rummaging around for a bit before fishing out a large black bag and tossing it at Carmine. She caught it, opening it up to reveal what she realised was a body bag.

Noctis stared at Ginseng for a bit, before exhaling loudly. "Is this your sick idea of a joke? That's a body bag, for fuck's sake!"

"No, no. He has a point," Carmine said.

"What do you mean?"

"I do not require oxygen. If the need arises, I can go without. This would be more like a sleeping bag, if anything."

Noctis stared at her, his expression one of dumbfoundment, before even that slowly gave way to a weird combination of realisation and exasperation.

"Ah, right. There's always… _that_ option."

"Then what about you?"

"Umm… you could stab me? With your boot knife?"

Carmine looked at him blankly, before a gauntleted hand lashed forwards to slap him.

"Are you insane?"

"Hey, cool it cool it cool it!" Noctis replied, his voice panicked. Raising his hand to block any more potential slaps, he continued, "I'm hiding on the gurney. I'll have to look like I _need_ to get to the hospital if the cops stop us for inspection."

"You, the driver!" Carmine suddenly shouted, turning on him with uncommon urgency.

"Yeah?"

"Do you have an IV drip in there?"

"Yes, I do..." the driver replied.

"Then get this man an IV drip!" Carmine shouted again, pointing at Noctis with a levelled index finger.

"But…" Noctis began uneasily. "What if we get stopped for inspections? Is the IV drip gonna cut it?"

Carmine's hand met the forehead of her helmeted head with a loud metallic clang. "We are going to be in an ambulance going _away_ from the immediate scene of a _violent crime_. Nobody with a brain cell is going to stop us."

"Ah." Noctis said simply, passively allowing Carmine to slowly drag him into the back of the ambulance along with her. He took off his peaked cap, passing it to his partner for safe keeping, before lying down on the gurney and settling himself in.

It was a black leather peaked cap with silver highlights, which at least corresponded with the rest of her partner's aesthetic. The cap was certainly one of high-quality make, but otherwise would have been inconsequential if not for the cap badge.

Carmine vaguely remembered Noctis's emblem being an aquila of some sorts, wings outstretched, one head staring out at her, the other blind. Only now, though, did she have a physical example in her hands to scrutinise.

It was a double-headed eagle, with the head on the right being blindfolded while the head on the left had its own eyes exposed. The left-facing sighted side perhaps represented looking back into the past, while the right-facing blinded eagle was then looking into the future. The blinded right side also had barbs jutting out of its talon, maybe representing that, although the future was unforeseen, the blinded side was better prepared learning from the mistakes of the past.

Why read so much into it? Given that this hat and its accompanying outfit had miraculously replaced her partner's own equipment back in Beacon, seemingly by divine intervention, her reading slightly deeper than usual into the symbolism was probably justified.

Why, precisely, was she so scrutinising all of a sudden? Things just seemed… fishy to her. With Lapis's involuntary fratricidal _berserkergang_ the night before, along with tonight's intrusion by Father Callows, a man who positively _oozed_ with the arcane, she could hardly be faulted for thinking that there was some eldritch business afoot.

But now was not the time to fixate on that. Survival was paramount, for now at least.

Carmine watched as Ginseng attached the fake IV to Noctis's arm, noting how the ambulance driver still seemed extremely jittery around them, before settling down into the cushioned seating area and shimmying into the body bag.

"Sorry, Matador…" Ginseng suddenly said, sounding decidedly hesitant to even open his mouth. "I didn't catch where you wanted to go?"

"Ah, that," Noctis replied congenially. "If that's the case, then our destination is Victory Mansions."

"I see…"

"I'd rather that you not look too deeply into it," Noctis said, his voice taking on a subtle edge. "We're only here temporarily, so I wouldn't get used to us being in Argus."

"That's… a relief."

"Yeah, I supposed it would for you."

Ginseng sighed in relief, dragging a hand over his head and slicking his hair back. "Well…" the driver started, "We might as well get moving now, then."

"Yes, we should."

"Alrighty," Ginseng replied, sounding considerably more upbeat now. He started to get out of the back of the ambulance, his hands moving towards the currently open doors at the back. "Get comfortable, yeah? The drive will probably take about half an hour."

"Understood," Noctis said automatically, just as the driver closed the ambulance doors with a decisive thud.

Carmine, finally managing to find a comfortable position to spend the trip in, went ahead to zip up and fully close the body bag. Enveloped in the comforting darkness that the opaque material provided, and reassured by the sudden jolt of the ambulance starting to move, she closed her eyes and began to doze off.

/-/

"So…" Ginseng began, looking over his shoulder for a moment to look at Noctis. "Matador. What brings you back to Argus?"

"Just a personal mission of mine," Noctis replied, not bothering to turn or from his place on the gurney. "Don't worry, I'm not going back full-time."

"That's good."

Surprisingly enough, Carmine's point had proven to be correct. Nobody in their right mind would have stopped an ambulance with its lights on and siren wailing, which proved to be something of a relief.

"A personal mission, you said…" the driver began. "Does that mission happen to involve cult hunting?"

Noctis's head snapped towards Ginseng. The suppressed pistol built into his left arm emerged, and the insertion of a fully loaded magazine along with the audible sound of the gun being cocked soon followed.

"Whoa, whoa, chill out man!"

"How did you know?" Noctis asked, his voice going deadly quiet.

"Mate, driving this around is my day job. The giant hole in the Continental and the sudden influx of dead or dying dudes in funny robes was kind of a giveaway…"

"Oh."

"Yep, figures. Did you know that the four of you are viral now?"

"What the fuck?"

Ginseng chuckled, despite himself. "Yeah, somebody managed to film you and that girl in the back fighting that… angel thing from last night."

"How much did they get?"

"Oh, basically everything," Ginseng replied, turning back towards the road. "They even filmed the bit where the big red energy beam took the angel out."

"Oversummarised, but accurate," Noctis replied casually, removing the still full magazine from his pistol. The handgun itself folded back into her arm soon afterwards.

"What was all that about, anyways? I'm pretty sure that some of the cultist bodies we got out of there looked like they got fucking _eaten_."

"We were staying in the Continental. Cultists tried to ambush us in our room. They died. An angel killed the cultists and then tried to kill us. We took it down."

"Wait, we?" Ginseng suddenly asked. "As in, a _team_? A Huntsmen-in-training team?"

"As of the start of this year's term, yes. What else did you think?"

The ambulance driver sighed, shaking his head as he did. "Man, I pity your team. They're either scared shitless of you, or they're just as fucked up as you."

"Definitely the latter," Noctis replied, before breaking out into soft laughter. He raised his now empty left hand within view of the rear-view mirror, bringing up three fingers one by one.

"White Fang," he said, raising his index finger.

"Legion." The middle finger came up next.

"Cainhurst." Finally, the ring finger.

"Wait, you said Cainhurst?" Ginseng suddenly yelled, looking over his shoulder with wide eyes. He pointed with a shaking index finger at the body bag on the seating area. "Which one is she?"

"Oh, you mean my partner? She's from Cainhurst."

"No, nobody's from Cainhurst," Ginseng continued urgently. "Nobody. It's impossible. They're all _robots_ , that's why."

"Wait, robots?"

Ginseng burst out into hysterical laughter, before catching himself. "Ah, I forgot that you haven't been around in a while. You see, Cainhurst sort of allied with Atlas a few months ago. They're helping out with law enforcement, and are generally acting as an auxiliary force to the Atlesian regiment already here."

"And?"

"Remember the Traders? The drug cartel from Vale? Yeah… the day before you arrived, Cainhurst kind of purged them from the city."

"Wait-"

"And guess how they did it? With combat troops, armoured personnel carriers and _tanks_. Imagine that! Fucking _tanks_ rolling through the streets… it was as if the city had become a war zone!"

"I mean… surely you saw the parade they put on near the start of the year. I don't think that they have any other doctrine _other_ than brute force.

" _Gēgē_ , I've lived ten years in Argus," Ginseng declared. "Ten years in this madhouse, and I ain't seen things be this bad since you went on your killing spree two years ago."

" _Gēgē_? Wait, you know how to speak Mistralian now?" Noctis asked, his tone one of impressed surprise.

"Only picked up a bit here and there, sadly. And yes, I know that ' _gēgē_ ' means brother."

"Good, good. Wouldn't want to be accidentally cussing me out, yes?"

"Well… yeah."

"Wait…" Noctis suddenly interjected. "Do you know any good dust shops on your route?"

"Yeah, there's one. They sell the good shit, yeah? Apparently the SDC is their main supplier."

"Make a pitstop there," Noctis said, his voice firm. "Just give me five minutes. I need to grab some crystals, that's all."

"You sure?" Ginseng replied doubtfully. "I mean, I'm pretty sure that you're a wanted criminal right now. Again."

"It shouldn't be any harm. I mean, the cops aren't actually chasing us or anything like that."

"Alright, then. It's up to you… I'm only the driver, yeah?"

"Thanks."

The ambulance rolled to a stop.

"We're here," Ginseng said from the front. "You gonna take a pit stop?"

"Yep," Noctis replied. "Give me five minutes."

He carefully peeled off the fake IV from his sleeve before getting up from the gurney, slowly pushing the back door open in order to not jolt his partner awake.

They were directly outside a dust shop, which meant that Ginseng had been true to his word. Surprisingly enough, it was open. Noctis jumped out of the back of the ambulance, managing only to surprise himself when he suddenly found himself caught in a deluge of rain.

"Sorry, mate," the driver piped up, a few seconds too late. "I forgot to tell you that it's raining now."

Noctis sighed. "No, it's fine," he responded, drawing his peaked cap down to shelter his face.

Indeed, it was rather inclement weather. Heavy rain combined with chilly winds to remind him somewhat of the typhoons that would occasionally batter Argus during the monsoon season, but it wasn't _quite_ that bad yet. Of course, his hat and greatcoat managed to protect him from the worst of it, but this was the kind of weather that one usually evaded entirely by staying indoors.

On the plus side, his greatcoat was billowing behind him in a manner that Noctis heartily approved of. If there were any benefits whatsoever for such a heavy-duty garment, it was this - it just looked _cool_.

He slowly pushed open the door of the shop, which caused a chime attached to it to tinkle. The shop itself wasn't anything special, just an average dust shop.

The most noteworthy thing was that Noctis happened to _know_ this shop, namely its location… which was smack in the middle of the International Settlement. He'd even been here before, with Pyrrha, to shop for dust…

He shook his head. Those memories were probably gone now… even the good ones.

"Good evening, young man," The shopkeeper, an older woman with Oriental features and a neat bun of hair that had greyed with age, suddenly said, jolting Noctis out of his funk. "How can I help you?"

"Oh, just looking to buy some dust crystals. Gravity dust, please."

"Sure, coming right up," the old lady said offhandedly in reply, already rummaging through the secure cases of dust crystals behind the counter. "Is there a specific shape you're looking for?"

"Discs, if I recall correctly."

"Ah, for a weapon upgrade then," the shopkeeper muttered, moving over to a different selection of cases. "I'll get you something a bit higher quality then, since you'd probably want the crystals to last."

"That would be nice, thank you very much," Noctis replied, taking off his cap and cradling it in the crook of his right arm.

"Mind the water, my dear," the shopkeeper called out. "I just had the laminate done up for the flooring."

"Oh," Noctis exclaimed apologetically, suddenly realising that his coat was positively dripping with rainwater. "Sorry about that."

"Don't worry about it, dear. I wouldn't _dream_ of chasing after the Matador himself for something as silly as a damaged shop floor."

Noctis froze. "I'm not sure I heard you correctly."

"Oh, how do I know? Word spreads, my dear, and when you're my age you don't have much to do but talk," the shopkeeper said casually. "And your… sudden renovation of the Continental wasn't unnoticed, not at all."

"What do you know?" Noctis mildly snapped, leaning on the shop's counter. "It was-"

"The Order of the Bloated Woman," the old woman snapped back, staring him down. "Yes, _that_ bunch of hooligans. They've only been a problem after the Crown fell, you know?"

"You say that as if it's my fault."

"It actually _is_ , in a way."

Noctis hissed out an annoyed breath through his teeth. "What else did you want me to do? You of all people probably know why I did what I did."

"I understand why you did what you did. I've seen you come in here with your _mèimei_ enough times to understand," the shopkeeper replied, the Mistralian word for 'little sister' casually rolling off of her tongue, before finally finding a suitable case of dust. She took out the secure casings of gravity dust crystals, placing them into an industrial-grade lockbox that resembled a briefcase. "But that doesn't mean that I agree with what you did."

"Ah, well," he conceded. "You're entitled to your own opinion, and me to mine."

The old woman placed the locked briefcase of gravity dust crystals onto the countertop with a weighty thunk, before saying, "But I have to ask… are you here to stay?"

"No, I'm only visiting."

"Good, good," she drawled in response. "Hunting the Order?"

Noctis huffed in frustration. "You know, you're the second person today to guess that. May I ask how you came to that conclusion?"

"The Order is behaving like a cornered animal… and cornered animals are the most ferocious. But what would scare a big dog like the Order, what would corner it?" The shopkeeper asked rhetorically, smiling gently as she did. "Simple. Something bigger and nastier, like a lion. Or a beastmaster… a _matador_ , as the Valeans say."

Noctis stared at the shopkeeper with some unidentifiable emotion, absentmindedly handing over the sum of lien she demanded before picking up the case of dust. Then, he turned to leave.

"For what it's worth, here's what I know," the old woman spoke up, causing Noctis to turn to look over his shoulder. "The Order people own a yacht called the _Hēi'àn Qíngfù_ , the Dark Mistress. It pulls into the harbor every month, just like clockwork, to take on supplies and other cargo."

"Go on…" he said, waving her on with a free hand.

"They say that the crew isn't normal, and that there's something… off about them. They stay for about a week at a time, before setting off again, only to come back the next month," she continued. "But that's all I know. If you want to know more… the docks. The pit fights. They're bound to know _something_."

"Ah…" Noctis said, taken aback by the shopkeeper's surprising willingness to help. "Umm… thank you."

"Surprised that I'm not afraid of the Order, my dear?" The old woman asked, before breaking out into soft laughter. "Don't be surprised. The sooner you wipe them out, the sooner the Matador leaves Argus. It's a simple choice, really."

"I see…"

"Now, now, dear. You have a cult to kill," the shopkeeper said, gesturing for him to leave the shop. "But try not to throw Argus into chaos while you're at it, okay?"

"Thank you," Noctis said evenly, placing the peaked cap back onto his head, before continuing on his way to the front door.

Pulling open the door of the shop with a free hand, causing the chime to tinkle again, he calmly made his way out of the dust shop. The door locked behind him immediately afterwards, and soon the lights illuminating the shop from within were shut off. That left him outside a closed shop on a decently well lit street, in the darkness of late night, standing in the middle of a rather sudden downpour.

Noctis strode over to the ambulance outside, rapping on the passenger side window - the left side of the vehicle - with the knuckles of his prosthetic hand. The window rolled down, revealing Ginseng's nervous gaze, before the automatic locks for the back doors disengaged with an audible low click.

"That took longer than expected, mate," the ambulance driver said.

"Just getting some leads for our assignment," he replied, gingerly getting into the back of the ambulance. Placing the briefcase on the floor next to the gurney, he took off his hat again before settling back into the gurney. "Time to get going."

The ambulance jolted itself back into movement. They drove in silence for a few minutes before Noctis sighed loudly.

"Anything wrong back there?"

"How much did this city change when I was gone?" Noctis asked wistfully, finally having enough presence of mind to roll back his right sleeve and reattach the fake IV to his remaining flesh arm.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't remember Argus being like this when I left," he explained, from his place on the gurney. "The people here weren't so… on edge. What changed?"

Ginseng went silent for a bit, before breaking out into hysterical laughter.

"What's so funny?" Noctis snapped.

"No, it's nothing," Ginseng responded from the driver's seat. "It's just… they're not on edge in general. In fact, the city's actually gotten _safer_ while you were gone, what with falling crime rates and all. No, they're afraid of _you_ , mate."

"Wait, why?"

Ginseng broke out into laughter again, before managing to restrain yourself. "Oh, man… Oh, man. You're gonna fucking kill me, mate…"

"Just give me a straight answer, please."

"Fine. There's a reason that your name is famous in this city, Matador, or should I say… infamous?" Ginseng asked, more to himself than to anybody else, before continuing, "I know you've probably heard this before, but…"

"Spit it out."

The ambulance driver sighed. "The bodies you burned that day… laid the foundation of what Argus is now. And I'm not even embellishing it. Matador, when you killed nineteen of the most powerful men in Argus in a span of twenty four hours, you literally _changed history_."

"Man-"

"And not even in Argus as well. I don't know whether you've so much as looked at a newspaper in the past two years, but what you did had some really fucking far-reaching consequences. Crime rates fell _globally_ after you deposed the Crown in Mistral. _Globally_."

"I mean-"

"And look at this city now!" Ginseng said, raising his voice slightly. His left hand came off from the steering wheel, and it was now being used to gesture violently. "Argus _used_ to have the most corrupt government in Remnant. Not even Mistral, the entirety of fucking Remnant! And look at it now! Today we're the _cleanest_ city in the kingdom, mostly because our politicians are scared _shitless_ that the fucking Matador will return and kill them all if they so much as piss in the wrong direction!"

"And did I want all of this baggage? What do you think?" Noctis snapped in reply.

It was truly a wonder that Carmine seemed to be sleeping peacefully through all this ruckus, and it would have been more of a surprise had Noctis not known from personal experience that his partner was a _very_ heavy sleeper. The body bag's thick impermeable material was probably helping as well.

"It doesn't matter what you want, because you've already gone and done it! Hell, it's been two fucking years since you've done it!"

"What else did you want me to do? The Crown tried to kidnap my fucking _sister_!"

The ambulance driver let out a deep and heavy breath, slamming his hand back onto the steering wheel. "Mate, I get ya. I'd be pissed if somebody tried to kidnap my _mèimei_ , too. Anybody with a sister would. It's just… you can't just pretend that what you did _never happened._ "

"The city was in chaos, Ginseng. I did what I had to do in order to keep me and mine safe," Noctis responded, but even to himself his words rang hollow.

"I know. It just seems like you're… running away from your actions. It's as if you're _scared_ of what you did…"

Noctis sighed, the anger draining out of him to leave only a cold emptiness behind. "Who wouldn't be? Hell, I don't even properly remember what I was thinking those twenty four hours… all I remember is this haze of cold _rage_ , but nothing even _approaching_ rational thought… you don't understand, I nearly lost _everything_ that day-"

"Again, if I were in your position, I'd be angry as well. But what you did was _beyond_ anger… some might argue that what you did was the work of a monster," Ginseng said quietly, interrupting Noctis's emotional plummet and stopping it before it got worse.

"Yeah… that makes sense," the boy in the gurney admitted, sounding scared and unsure even to his own ears. "Maybe it _was_ the work of a monster…"

"Maybe," the ambulance driver agreed in a whisper, before going quiet. Noctis couldn't find it in himself to continue.

Nothing else was said. The rest of the trip passed by in silence.

 **(I promised more murder than normal, but turns out that the chapter wanted to be a low-key thriller rather than the murderfest I was envisioning. This is actually the second half of the previous chapter, so we'll probably be seeing bigger and better things next chapter.)**


End file.
